For some cities these are the best of times and the worst of times. Many rapidly growing cities have, for now, some of the best living environments for children. That growth comes at a very high price. As these new urban centers experience explosive growth, the lifeblood is sucked out of cities which were once bustling and diverse.
____
To see the challenges facing children in America's cities clearly, we need a wide-angle lens. Thriving cities or struggling cities are really two aspects of the same urban phenomenon. When the middle-class takes flight, we end up with economic segregation and an extraordinary geographic concentration of poor children. It might not portend all that well for the thriving cities either, as cities may follow a "boom and bust" cycle where we see once-gleaming shopping malls or downtown areas that are transformed over time into half-vacant relics unable to complete with the onslaught of super stores.
____
When we pave over farmland and obliterate small towns to create a spanking new city, we are in effect tossing an old central city onto the scrap heap. Millions of children live in those cities, victims of explosive growth, middle-class flight and a failure to invest in good schools, safe streets, and decent health care. They are our children. They deserve better.
____
One goal is to examine the relationship between quality of life and population dynamics. There are some revealing correlations between children's quality of life and total population, population density, and population growth rates in cities. Of these three population variables, population change has the most significant impact on quality of life.
____
Findings should support the argument that faster rates of population growth in the suburbs are linked to declines in quality of life in the city. Even though the data shows that cities growing at a rapid pace provide a better environment for children. They may not conclude that faster rates of population growth cause these cities to provide a better environment for children. Better environmental growth in a city, or related factors could contribute to the association between rapid population growth rates and a positive environment for kids.
____
Examination of data shows that a predicting factor of both quality of life and rate of population change is a city's location within its metro area. Suburban cities located at the perimeter of metro areas have higher population growth rates and better quality of life scores than cities which are more centrally located in their metro area. Because class and race are frequently distributed according to these same geographic boundaries, it is reasonable to assume that these two social factors are integral in determining the quality of life a city provides for its children.
____
The data shows that a city's population size per se has little correlation to the quality of a child's life. While smaller cities tend to score better on many indicators than larger cities, the only indicator with which total population has a significant correlation is population density cities with more people tend to have a higher density.
