Multigenerational Communities or Bust

I’m raising a New Yorker. A city kid through and through. It’s not by accident that this is happening: I grew up in the city myself (Manhattan), and so it has always seemed to me like an obvious place to raise my own child. He was born, 10-plus years ago, in a downtown Manhattan hospital, and came home to the house in Brooklyn where he has lived ever since.

I expected my son to be loyal to his city, the way that I have always been, but sometimes he surprises even me with his hometown pride. Like the time he returned from a trip to a leafy Massachusetts suburb, re-entering his native burg at perhaps its lowest point – the grim streets around Penn Station. On a hot and humid night, he strode past the piles of garbage and the fluorescent fast-food outlets, breathed in the fetid air, and declared, "It’s good to be home. I love New York."