The suburb where I live (Oak Park, Illinois) used to fit that description. We're 15 minutes from downtown Chicago, with great public schools, wonderful parks for little kids, and a pretty diverse population with a heavy concentration on mixed-race families and families headed by gay parents. So where's the problem? Affordable housing. When we moved here 7 years ago, it was a little bit pricey but still doable for most middle-class people. However, when people began to discover this fact, of course prices went up. Simple supply and demand economics. Today, you couldn't get a 2BR condo here for the price we paid for our 4BR house.

Chicago is hard.  The affordable suburbs have crime rates and gang activity that are comparable to those in the city.  The nearby burbs that are "nice" are outrageously expensive.  People who make a middle-income living end up getting pushed out toward the end of the El line, which makes you wonder why you even bother to stay here.

We've talked ourselves stupid about the prospect of leaving town.  We decided that we're going to stay.  And we're going to sink every dime into moving even closer to the loop.  We're a three and a half mile commute from Mr. B's office now.  I'm going to look at an apartment this afternoon that's a 1 1/2 mile commute.  It's going to cost us an extra three hundred a month in rent but we've decided it's worth it.  If we left town for the burbs the kids would literally never see their father until the weekend.

Now me and the monkeys are off to walk to our neighborhood library where we'll have story time and plenty of Spanish immersion.  Then we walk to the supermercado and get stuff for lunch and dinner.  This is what makes it worth staying here for us.  If I had to drive everywhere I went I would lose my mind.

Minneapolis has provided everything we need/want.  Affordable home, great elementary school to which we walk each day, beautiful parks, lakes.  When the weather is good we spend days at a time without ever using the car - we walk to grocery store, the park, the post office, coffee & ice cream shops, library, movie rental, etc, etc, etc.  St. Paul seems similar, though I've not gotten to know it as well.  Some in St. Paul even say it's superior to Mpls.  Anyway, if you can withstand the mid April snow storms, it's a pretty darn good option for a family in my mind.  Oh - I'm talking the City of Mpls (not even a first ring burb, though some of those are nice, too.)

We are facing the same problems that you are in our little SF suburb, Julie and Miss-B: even suburban housing prices are outrageous.  We are looking to upgrade from a 2 bedroom this summer, and can't afford to stay in our current neighborhood, which we love, because there's nothing available in our price range - and we're not talking luxary housing either, we're talking bare-bones 3 bedroom, 2 bath.  When you can't afford the city, or the burbs, where do you go??

Important topic! We were in SF for 10 years and were just about making it work even though so many of our friends fled to the 'burbs - there are some excellent public schools in SF, too!  But just last year we left for Chicago - wanting to raise the kids in a great city but needing a place where we could afford to buy.  So we ended up in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the nation (Rogers Park), right on the lake, and with a fabulous magnet school a short drive away for the kids.  We were able to buy a huge 3 BR condo for the equivalent price of a 450 sq ft. studio in San Francisco (literally!).  We miss the Bay Area but are happy about the move we made every single day.

Hey Jordan--I grew up in Rogers Park! I think it was a real blessing to be raised in such a diverse community. I actually went to a private high school that had no racial majority. (There were more of us white girls than any other group, but we made up a lot less than 50%.)

We are one of the 800 families that left SF for the "burbs." I will believe this initiative when I see it. I have no idea how building housing (that already exists) over retail shops will cure the inflated home prices and solve the problem of a weak school district. A district, I might add, where you have to apply to get into you school of choice. This means that if you live next door to a school, you are probably not going to end up sending your kids there.

Tragic state of affairs.

I live in Detroit, and as much as its home to me and as lovely as one of your illustrious contributors makes it sound, we kind of have the worst of borth worlds here. Few services for famiies, no reliable public transportation, and very little shopping nearby mean I drive almost as much as a suburbanite (not as far, but I do have to drive just about everywhere). We chose to buy in a great neighborhood versus  some of the more "citylike" areas of the city, but the downside is we're not much closer to the amenities of city living than we would be in the suburbs. There's no way we could have afforded a house as pretty as ours in even the inner-ring suburbs, however, and when we were looking there was nothing available in a neighborhood that would have offered us more walkability. We often regret buying here instead of the suburb just across the famed "Eight Mile" from us, but we do have a diversity of ages and socioeconomic classes. Also, Detroit's been such a desperate city for so long that there's a certain sense of interdependence from those of us that stay. We look out for each other in ways that people don't seem to in the burbs. We exchange information and resources in many ways, and I like that.

You are right, MIJ - even if we could've afforded to stay in SF, we probably wouldn't have, because the school system is so f-ed up.  SF is one of the least family-friendly places in the world.  Why do I love it so?

Yup, MIJ and Alisyn, you are right.  SF is totally un-family friendly.  I never understood just how far off it was until I got to Chicago.  It's a shame.  And here you are guaranteed to get into your neighborhood school - if you want it.  We did get our son into an excellent neighborhood school in SF, though, it just took a lot of effort.  It can be done, but I think what it boils down to is that it's so much work to raise kids in a city.  There has to be enough about it that you just can't live without for it to be worthwhile.  What I see in the 'burbs here is people getting into their cars in their attached garages, driving everywhere, and then back into the garage and into the house.  No one seems to run into their neighbors and I don't see kids outside playing in their huge yards.  So that's sad, too.

Hello,

       I am an SFSU journalism student, and I am currently writing about the sidewalk gardens being planted in the Mission District. If you have Ms. Gillette's contact information, please mail it to me. Conversely, you may send her mine. She was thanked by PlantSF for the Guerrero/San Jose Blvd sidewalk garden, so her input would be marvelous.

Thanks,

Juliet

juliet_s_blalack@hotmail.com

I feel like Strollerderby has been too hard-hitting lately, what with taking on fundamentalist museums and writing beautiful letters to congresswomen and so on. We need some sort of diversion, a fluff piece that takes our minds off our troubles and just