Family Friendly Cities

Joel Kotkin writes in the WSJ:

The family's enduring supremacy is also apparent in the attitudes of young people, the so-called millennials.

As Morley Winograd and Michael Hais suggest in their upcoming book, "Millennial Mainstream," this new generation is twice as numerous as Generation X, and far more family-oriented. They display markedly less proclivity for teen pregnancy, abortion and juvenile crime. They also tend to have more favorable relations with their parents, with half staying in daily touch and almost all in weekly contact.

The evidence thus suggests that the obsession with luring singles to cities is misplaced. Instead, suggests Paul Levy, president of Philadelphia's Center City district association, the emphasis should be on retaining young people as they grow up, marry, start families and continue to raise them.

Greensboro has always been good at the family-friendly part, and has recently gotten better at atracting and retaining young people. That sounds like a winning combination.

Projects in the works like the proposed downtown greenway and the nearby Haw River State Park, should help even more.