Interesting discussion on living in the city with children

Johan and I stumbled upon the organisation YIMBY, short for “Yes in my backyard” (in opposition to “Not in my backyard”/NIMBY, an expression refering to people that are negative to changes in their own neighborhoods), a while ago, and we seem to share most of their ideas. I love the city and living in it. I also think that from a sustainable living perspective it’s a much better alternative than moving to a suburb and becoming dependant upon your car (or, in many cases, cars).

Recently they had a very interesting article about familys with children who choose to stay in (or move back to) the city (in response to an article in the local Gothenburg newspaper GP about the same thing). The discussion is very interesting and I’m very pleased that there are more and more families who seem to share our opinion on the matter - that you don’t have to move to the suburb (spending hours in your car going to and from work) just because you’ve had children.

Here in Gothenburg it have seemed to be a very strong norm (much worse than in Stockholm, I think) that you move out of the city once you’ve started a family. When we first got here we did the same thing, moved to a semi-detached house in Kungsbacka, one of the Gothenburg “suburbs”. A very nice place indeed but deadly boring (sorry all Kungsbacka-residents ;)) and, most important, we spent most of our time commuting. In spite of everyone elses opinion we moved back into an apartment in the city just before our first daughter was born.

Now we’re looking for a new place to live, preferrably an apartment but with a more child-friendly backyard, and in an area where the’re are more families living nearby. And even if we do decide to move to a house (which isn’t totally out of the question but definitely not our first choice), it has to be in an area within the city, and have good public transportation so that we don’t have to become dependant on cars getting to and from work.

I hope that YIMBY (and others) can influence the politicians to build more apartments which are a bit more “family-friendly” in the city! As well as improved services for families, such as day care (currently the waiting period for municipal day care is very long, but it isn’t any better in the suburbs though) and schools.

Read the article and ongoing discussion here (in Swedish).