demographic inversion

[jon]

Interesting article on how the demographics of cities are changing.

http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2 ... be122ac1a9

Certainly explains what is happening to Ballard.

[garth]

[perfectfire]

[biliruben]

I resemble that remark.

[jon]

Its always the schools that make the parents move out to the burbs. At some point that will flip, with the upscale parents staying close in to all their friends. Once in-city schools have a critical mass of involved parents, then those will become the desirable schools.

When I lived in Boston there was a ring around the metro area where the best schools are. In Seattle it is more concentrated into Bellevue and Mercer Island. Bellevue especially has become a major city in its own right, with better schools that the outer burbs that surround it.

[garth]

I think capital hill is kind of an example of this, mansions turned into multi-family rental housing, now heading back the other way.

[garth]

Jon,

I don't think that has been true of the bellevue school district for quite some time.

In most cases with cities of decent size the older the city and district are the lower their ranking goes as the population is more diverse and there is a longer financial legacy. Bellevue is a good school district, but I have never seen them ranked above Lake Washington or Issaquah which are the surrounding districts. MI is generally the top district in the state and is a pretty special case that really is "different".

http://www.schooldigger.com/go/WA/districtrank.aspx

We have been in an environment for 50-80 years where it was almost always cheaper and easier to push development out further out and create more suburbs and exurbs than it was to repair and renovate older areas as well as deal with the existing population. There are a number of forces converging both economic and psychological which are going to change this quite a bit going forward.

[jon]

garth, thanks for the correction about Bellevue. When i moved into the area I was mostly focused on evaluating elementary schools because my kids were younger. Bellevue still has a many elementary schools near the top, but overall they are not as highly ranked as I once thought.

The question then is will Bellevue become more like Medina or more like Seattle. I think it is still close enough to the top that it will remain attractive to parents and its close proximity to jobs will keep it near the top.

[Notabull]

[garth]

The biggest one is the nature of the housing bubble itself and the drive until you quality philosophy.

This David Stiff guy and his "Housing Bubbles Collapse Inward" article lays it out much better than I could:

http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pd ... llapse.pdf

[Notabull]

[Robroy]

We are in a changing culture. What would happen if a technological breakthrough suddenly allowed fairly regular and practical telecommuting for a significant portion of commuters? It is happening to me, which is one reason I am moving to the Tennesee area. I do think this thing will collapse from the exurbs in, but it will reach all the way in, as they all do. Then flatten, then repeat the old pattern. But each one is different. After all, there are recessions, and there is the great depression, which gave us a rather nasty war. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out. One thing is for sure, only PART of the turmoil going on in the world is economic, and only part of it is housing related.

Also, someone mentioned the old inefficient cars going to poor people. When I was a kid, they were called dinosaurs. However, these McMansions are not inefficient. The opposite is true. OTOH, I do consider them the 21st century equivalent of mobile homes. They certainly don't come with any actual real estate, hence the popularity of rechargeable electric lawn mowers.

[jon]

The problem with going to Tennessee to take advantage of telecommuting is that you never know when they will prefer someone who is telecommuting from India. The jobs that will remain in the US are the ones that require face time, and that is why I think the major metro areas have gotten an even higher premium than they once did.

[Robroy]