Chicagoland renters and buyers are itching for walkable suburbs. Enter 'surban.'

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

A) " The school district has way too many black and Hispanic people, little Jimmy just wouldnt fit in and I don't want them corrupting him."

or

B) "The school district for our potential new house has a 2 out of 10 rating, no way little Jimmy will be going there, he needs better opportunities than that!"

I think it's probably both. Parents don't want their kid to be a social experiment, and you only get one chance to do it right.

We know that heavily nonwhite (really heavily black and Hispanic) schools generally tend to underperform and have a laundry list of non-academic challenges.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I think it's probably both. Parents don't want their kid to be a social experiment, and you only get one chance to do it right.

We know that heavily nonwhite (really heavily black and Hispanic) schools generally tend to underperform and have a laundry list of non-academic challenges.

We also know that in schools which are mixed enough to have a representative statistical sample, the white kids have functionally identical performance to white kids of the same economic background in 90%+ white suburbia, private schools, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I can understand why parents wouldn't want their kid to go to a bad school which has significant disciplinary problems - particularly on the middle or high school level, where they may have concerns about personal safety. But in terms of performance, it's a logical fallacy thinking that going to a "good" school is going to somehow enrich and/or supercharge your child.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by eschaton

We also know that in schools which are mixed enough to have a representative statistical sample, the white kids have functionally identical performance to white kids of the same economic background in 90%+ white suburbia, private schools, etc.

Inner city/ urban schools tend not to be representative statistical samples, however, and whites tend to make up around 10% of the school body.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by JManc

Inner city/ urban schools tend not to be representative statistical samples, however, and whites tend to make up around 10% of the school body.

Yeah, but the general point is you most care about your kid's performance, not the performance of other kids.

If it's true that, say, white kids, or upper income kids, perform the same in urban schools as in Scarsdale, then that seems a strong argument for considering urban schools.

Of course there are other concerns. You might not want your kid to be "alone" in terms of race/ethnicity/identity, or there could be safety/ discipline/mental health issues.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by JManc

Inner city/ urban schools tend not to be representative statistical samples, however, and whites tend to make up around 10% of the school body.

True enough. But everywhere you get a large enough grouping to track disaggegated scores, you see there's basically no difference.

For example, here in Pittsburgh, most of the city magnet schools are majority black, with somewhere between a 20% and 45% white minority. If you look at the scores in aggregate, they lag suburban schools significantly. However, if you dis-aggregate scores, the white students tend to score as well as the top suburban schools and the black students overperform the neighborhood schools. It's just that the schools do not close the gap (indeed, AFAIK no schools in the country do) meaning any school with more black students will come out lower on aggregate metrics.

Even if your intent is not racist in any way in selecting school quality based upon Greatschools ranking or whatever, the practical effect if you give these rankings top priority is you will be selecting for the schools with as few black/Latino students as possible.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Yeah, but the general point is you most care about your kid's performance, not the performance of other kids.

If it's true that, say, white kids, or upper income kids, perform the same in urban schools as in Scarsdale, then that seems a strong argument for considering urban schools.

Of course there are other concerns. You might not want your kid to be "alone" in terms of race/ethnicity/identity, or there could be safety/ discipline/mental health issues.

The latter should never be downplayed. It can (and does) effect the overall academic performance that otherwise would be achieved in another school. The issue is not they are urban schools, I went to urban schools and did fine, but socioeconomics of those schools. There are suburban schools dealing with the same crap.

[10023]

Schools are really only as good as the parents of the kids who attend the school.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

I am really getting tired of the "you don't do this or that because of black or brown people."

so, you're getting tired of reality then?

Originally Posted by jtown,man

Let us consider two discussions a family might have when thinking about moving:

A) " The school district has way too many black and Hispanic people, little Jimmy just wouldnt fit in and I don't want them corrupting him."

AND

B) "The school district for our potential new house has a 2 out of 10 rating, no way little Jimmy will be going there, he needs better opportunities than that!"

fixed that for you.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Yeah, the C&NW (today's UP lines) and the CB&Q (today's BNSF) provided the best service by far, along with the Illinois Central (today's Metra Electric). Those lines also had interurbans paralleling them in a few cases, the North Shore Line, South Shore Line and the CA&E. The towns along those lines had strong links to the city and grew rapidly, and in a walkable fashion, in the days before expressways changed the burbs forever.

It will not surprise you to learn that many of the railroad executives and employees lived in these suburbs and rode their own trains to get to their downtown offices. To this day, Barrington still gets a stop on every single express train because the C&NW's president lived there back in the day and had a holding yard constructed there.

The other railroads that operated commuter service back then were focused more on long-distance passenger and freight service, so commuter service took second fiddle. Milwaukee Road in particular stretched all the way to Seattle, so Chicago-area commuter service was small potatoes for them. They didn't want to bog down their premium, fast long-distance Hiawatha trains with a ton of slow commuter trains, so they operated a lighter schedule of commuter service. The towns along the line didn't really swell with Chicago commuters until the postwar period, when the new expressways got congested and driving/flying killed the long-distance train.

As a girl, my mother moved into a brand new subdivision in Deerfield in 1969, less than a mile from the train station. It's a pretty typical ranch house for the era, the neighborhood has sidewalks (and now mature trees) but also tons of cul-de-sacs. You could just as easily be ten miles from the nearest train station. If you go to Winnetka, on the other hand, pretty much everything within a mile radius of the train station was already built-up by WWII, with charming architecture and a walkable design.

good stuff. thanks for the little history lesson.

i grew up in wilmette, but my grandparents lived nearby in glenview. even at a young age i could tell how much older (east) wilmette felt than glenview, despite both being developed around their respective train stations.

[llamaorama]

This is something Dallas could be good at. All of its booming sprawlburbs started as actual small towns. Many have rail transit into the city, too. Also, as older suburbs age, I think they will want to market themselves as leafy traditional communities so they can keep up property values.

Houston is hopeless in this respect. Almost all of its suburbs are cookie cutter subdivisions in unincorporated harris county where there is no urban or civic mindset.

[Dblcut3]

I really love how Chicago's suburbs are centered around the METRA lines. It seems like most suburbs have a train station surrounded by a downtown (or at least a small town center) and a decent grid pattern allowing for walkability in the suburbs. I can't think of any other area of the country that has such a big amount of good, walkable suburbs.

Even if you despise most suburbs (like I do) you have to admit that Chicagoland tends to do a damn good job at making them the best they can be. I wish other cities did this, but sadly most US cities don't have an extensive commuter rail network like Chicago does.

[jd3189]

Originally Posted by Dblcut3

Even if you despise most suburbs (like I do) you have to admit that Chicagoland tends to do a damn good job at making them the best they can be. I wish other cities did this, but sadly most US cities don't have an extensive commuter rail network like Chicago does.

I don't know how expansive Metra is in Chicago land( probably very large) but it does have some neighbors in that department like NYC's Metro North and SF's BART. Even Miami's Tri-rail and future Brightline are doing a good job of connecting suburbs and cities.

[ardecila]

Well, Chicago was the nation's rail capital so it had many, many rail lines feeding in. The railroads were headquartered here and the executives rode their own trains from distant leafy suburbs to downtown offices.

There are plenty of similar suburban regions on the East Coast, most notably Northern New Jersey which is very similar to suburban Chicago IMO. Suburban Boston and Philly have some of the same DNA. Outside of Chicago and the East Coast, the only railroad-oriented suburban corridor I can think of is the SF Peninsula with Caltrain. Many cities had lots of streetcar suburbia, which remains somewhat walkable but lost its transit orientation when the streetcars were ripped out.

[llamaorama]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Outside of Chicago and the East Coast, the only railroad-oriented suburban corridor I can think of is the SF Peninsula with Caltrain. Many cities had lots of streetcar suburbia, which remains somewhat walkable but lost its transit orientation when the streetcars were ripped out.

Maybe Cleveland? Didn't the Lackawanna had commuter service there up until sometime in the 1960's or 1970's? Also what were the origins of the Red Line before it was converted to rapid transit?

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

Maybe Cleveland? Didn't the Lackawanna had commuter service there up until sometime in the 1960's or 1970's? Also what were the origins of the Red Line before it was converted to rapid transit?

I think most major metros had some form of commuter rail until recent decades. Chicago was able to retain rail because it's, for U.S. standards, quite centralized.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by ardecila

There are plenty of similar suburban regions on the East Coast, most notably Northern New Jersey which is very similar to suburban Chicago IMO. Suburban Boston and Philly have some of the same DNA.

Northern/Central NJ is actually the least rail-oriented region in the NYC metro. Historically, the majority of Manhattan-bound commuters took buses or ferries, and the rail-to-bus/ferry ratio is still pretty low.

That said, the number of rail riders into Manhattan has increased share in recent years, largely due to Secaucus Transfer, which enabled more one-seat rides into Manhattan. When the idiotically delayed second tunnel is built, the share of rail passengers from NJ will likely markedly increase.

In contrast, almost all transit riders from Long Island and Upstate/CT use rail. LIRR and Metro North still have higher rail rider counts than NJ Transit, though the gap has closed. But NJ has more overall inbound transit commuters, owing to huge bus and ferry numbers.

All things equal, commuters prefer a one-seat rail ride over a bus or ferry, or rail ride involving transfers, which is the primary reason NJ commuter suburbs are cheaper than those in LI/CT/Upstate (though those NJ commutes with direct one-seat rides have no discount).

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by jd3189

I don't know how expansive Metra is in Chicago land( probably very large) but it does have some neighbors in that department like NYC's Metro North and SF's BART. Even Miami's Tri-rail and future Brightline are doing a good job of connecting suburbs and cities.

Metra is in another class compared to Tri-Rail. Metra carried around 17 million passengers in 4Q 2017, while Tri-Rail carried around 1 million passengers.

Per APTA, Metra is the #4 commuter rail agency in the U.S., and the #1 commuter rail agency outside the NYC metro (though BART, functionally like commuter rail, is officially considered urban heavy rail).

http://www.apta.com/resources/statis...rship-APTA.pdf

[cannedairspray]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

so, you're getting tired of reality then?






fixed that for you.

You might be projecting there.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I think most major metros had some form of commuter rail until recent decades.

i'm curious to know how common commuter rail was in the pre-war period.

there are only 9 legacy (pre-war) commuter rail systems still operating in the US:

long island RR (nyc)
metro north RR (nyc)
new jersey transit (nyc/philly)
metra (chicago)
south shore (chicago)
MBTA (boston)
SEPTA (philly)
Caltrain (san francisco)
MARC (dc/baltimore)

combined, those 9 systems carry over 90% of all commuter rail passengers nationally.


wikipedia lists these legacy commuter rail lines that have gone defunct.

detroit - grand trunk/SEMTA from pontiac
milwaukee - milwaukee road from watertown
cleveland - erie-lackawana from youngstown
pittsburgh - B&O/PATrain from versailles
pittsburgh - P&LE from beaver falls

that has got to be a woefully incomplete list of defunct legacy commuter rail lines in the US. does anyone have a more complete list?

Originally Posted by Crawford

Chicago was able to retain rail because it's, for U.S. standards, quite centralized.

yeah, there's also been a positive feedback loop going on with metra and downtown centralization. metra has absolutely played a very significant role in helping to keep downtown chicago as centralized as it is over the past 70 years.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by 10023

Schools are really only as good as the parents of the kids who attend the school.

Shhhhh, don't say things like this. You might get branded as a horrible person