(Almost) Inner-City Parenting

Unlike the pattern described recently in a Vox article in parenting in the inner-city, my wife and I moved from the 'burbs to the inner-city before becoming parents.  There might be quibbling about the definition of inner-city in the part of Calgary where we have lived for the last nine years.  Calgary has its onion layers of growth and development and we moved 16km closer to downtown, from the layer that afforded the view of the northwestern city limits to a neighbourhood where the original houses are over 100 years old.

At the time of the move, we actually increased the square footage we occupied, moving from a newish 1000-square-foot townhouse to a 1400 square-foot apartment-style condominium. Parenthood was not on the horizon when we moved, but we immediately came to appreciate the walkability of the neighbourhood.  As I said, it was not significant at the time, but rather than facing the prospects of bussing our son past an empty lot declaring itself (as it has for nine years) the future site of a school, we are now within 1.2 kilometres of three elementary schools. Our son's is just 500 metres away. Beyond that there are three playgrounds, two pools and the daycare that he has attended for the last 2 1/2 years. The level of car traffic being makes me reluctant to let him head out on his bicycle on his own but with time, he will be able to navigate his way onto the bike paths safely.  Ultimately, though, we are in a location where he will have relative independence to move about on his own without being reliant on his mother and I to get to school by car.

When Gabriel came along, there was no impulse to pull up stakes and head to the burbs for the extra space and a patch of grass that we could declare exclusively ours.  The infrastructure in our neighbourhood is abundant.  If there was an issue with the space in the condominium, we would adapt to it and we would cross our fingers that this would be what he grew up knowing.  We have ready access not only to the schools, daycare, parks and pools, but the transit system within a 7-minute walk.  Transit easily gets us to music class, downtown, museums, the zoo, movie theatres and other facilities that are all keys parts of free time that I spend with my son (without relying on the car.)

There are other parts of Calgary, namely the still-developing East Village, that have the potential to give families the opportunity to stay right in the downtown area.  Schools are currently a little harder to come by in the East Village, but the amenities there are quite attractive. With museums, the library and playgrounds all nearby, the main issues are proximity to schools and whether or not developers are willing to provide the space families need or if they favour the profitability of smaller units.

In our case, the space we have is more than enough.  If we happened to have ended up having two children, we may have had some tougher decisions to make, especially if we ended up with a boy and a girl, but at this point, the 1400 square feet we have is more than enough. The blog 5 Kids 1 Condo makes the case that a bit of hacking (both in terms of trimming away the unessential and finding a few deft short cuts) would further maximize the way we use our space.  Our mindset throughout, however, has been to use the amenities around us as much as possible rather than insulating ourselves in a detached home and investing a lot of time and energy in duplicating what is readily at hand.

The lessons that we have learned and the habits we have developed are all different from what would be the case in the 'burbs.  Our son has probably socialized more on the nearby playgrounds and his time walking or travelling by transit has exposed him to a wider variety of people from walks of life he would not encounter if he was chauffeured about the city from a distant locus of similar houses with a vista of matching garage doors extending down a street.