(Matthew Russotto)
What's the quality of life for a kid who has to get a ride to do anything? If he wants to see his friends, he needs to get mommy to drop everything and drive across town.
I'm glad I grew up in an east coast village with a downtown area, and a reasonably high density that I always knew people around me. It doesn't mean I wasn't bored, but it could have been a lot worse if it was Temecula or Murietta.
The problem is that people keep willingly buying up more and more urban sprawl communities that discourage kids from being able to walk anywhere. The fast growing Riverside County comes to mind as an area that has a high population of families with kids, but very little for them to do compared to living in a more urbanized areas.
Besides, unless you get a McMansion the new suburban areas around here have about as much space as a house in an urban area. The problem is that many people have irrational fears of all areas in a city being a bad neighborhood, and-or people being unwilling to buy an older house.
Leave the 800 sq ft places for single guys like me, and the retired empty-nesters. There's plenty of both to fill them up.
Dave Hogan
