Kids in downtown seems hard enough, a high rise would be even more difficult. Dont know what they’d do. Can you even toilet train them? Also, what do they eat? Am sure they’d consume the upholstery off the furniture at some point and their little hooves would scratch up the floors pretty bad. To each their own I guess…
People feel like they need personal space because we don’t provide enough public space for humans. We’ve given it all away to cars. That’s part of the issue.
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Oh I hear ya loud and clear. My mom and dad each grew up in houses less than 900 square feet + basement (and I mean a real basement, not a luxury basement) in households of 5 kids each. When I was kid, I was never carted around by my parents and my family of 4 kids only had one car that my dad took to work. We also lived in the car dependent burbs. I did a combo of walking to school and taking the bus without even my mother waking up to see us off to school. My dad woke us up and we saw ourselves off to school. Things are a lot different now for sure.
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Thanks so much for all these great thoughts everyone! I really appreciate the different perspectives, and it is encouraging to see that families do live downtown, though it may be difficult. Part of me is very tempted to give it a try with a young kid, if only for a year, (and then return to our downtown-adjacent SFH near MLK/Poole if it really sucks, haha!) because living in a neighborhood where you can’t walk anywhere makes me feel so trapped.
I also nannied a good bit in college for a family in 5 Points, and I found being able to walk the toddler and preschooler to places with the stroller was so much easier than loading them up in my car. And the forced minimalism of a small space sounds fascinating—but that may just be me. 
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Even in a small house, kids can get on their bike and go. May have grown up in small house but outside is unlimited. Live downtown, guess you could go to parks, but that gets boring fast. Definitely could not let young kids there unsupervised. Small house comparison really not that relevant. Even a 900 square foot small house is larger than most apartments.
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Neighborhoods with nothing to do get a lot older a lot faster than downtown for kids. When I was growing up, we moved from a place where I could bike to adjacent neighborhoods and shops to one that was only connected to a highway. I went from being an active kid to staying inside and playing video games all the time.
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We moved from a SFH in Dorothea Gardens when we were pregnant with our second child. We loved living walking distance to everything and doing it pre-kids and then even when we just had one that was a baby was doable. As soon as he became more mobile we realized we were going to need more space once the second came along and they got older. Our house was also very vertical so the actual shared living space on the first floor was tiny with little room for a toddler to run around and basically no backyard. We ended up moving to Longview in East Raleigh and now have a house spacious enough for our now two toddlers to run around, big fenced in backyard, are surrounded by other families that moved to the neighborhood for similar reasons, and still have some walkability to Brookside and a five minute drive or bike ride downtown. When we go places with them now it’s typically a brewery so I love being so close to Lynwood and soon to be Ironworks but most often we hang in our backyard or a neighbors. We are also finally getting to a phase where we can go out and socialize once the kids are down and being 2 miles from Person St, 3 miles from Warehouse District, less than a mile from Alamo,etc makes it feel like we are still connected to DTR while also being in a more “suburban” neighborhood. It’s the SFH downtown adjacent neighborhoods that make Raleigh so unique to other cities like Richmond where I grew up because there are very limited SFH downtown adjacent areas to live there that also have high quality public schools.
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A lot of the two bedroom apts are at least 1100-1300sq ft, and a good chunk of the one bedroom apts are at least 900 sq ft. In a truly big city like NYC this may be true, but DTR still has plenty of apts in decent sizes.
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While I don’t live in DTR, we also don’t live in a SFH. (I mainly just wanted to offer a different perspective, and my kids are older than those who have been mentioned.) We are a family of 5: 2 adults, 13 year old twins, and an 8 year old. We lived in a new build 1,500 sqft townhouse off of Capital Boulevard for right at 9 years. The neighborhood looked like lots of others around the burbs with basically no character. Over the years, the neighborhood began to decline… drug use on the streets, shootings a bit too close for comfort, traffic right out the back door, lack of walkability, and my long 540 (thurmbsdown) commute to Morrisville ultimately led us to the decision to move to NW Raleigh.
We moved into another townhouse in a semi-walkable neighborhood (as I have mentioned on many threads here). Our new townhouse neighborhood was built in the 80s and is around 2,000 sqft. We do have a GREAT deck partially shaded by mature trees in the back where I (and the kids) spend a lot of time when it is nice outside. After living here a few years, I have come to realize that we have too much room in this house (you could chop back the square footage in the bedrooms and living room and we would still be perfectly comfortable) but the neighborhood and ability to walk to various places in less than 10 minutes from our front door made the decision a win. (Plus I cut my commute in half, then as a bonus, my office moved even closer last year. 
)
Parenting wise (to stay on topic) I got a lot of flack from our families saying we needed more space, a big yard, garage, etc. To use my dad’s words… “Townhouses are for people starting our and old people.” I beg to differ, our kids ride their bikes and/or roller skate in the street all the time. The twins area always excited for the chance to run up to the store to get a missing ingredient when we are cooking supper. Our youngest has become great friends with a retired lady across the street and they spend hours upon hours watching movies, baking cookies, and playing Uno. Covid forcing us into WFH and remote school threw us a curve ball, but thankfully our dining room was quickly converted into a makeshift classroom. Our previous townhouse was open concept on the first floor, whereas our 1986 vintage townhouse has divided rooms. This really saved us during the lockdown period as I would not have been able to work in the same room with the 3 kids doing their schoolwork. We also have a small room upstairs that the kids use as a TV room/library, which has also been good to keep the downstairs in check as a “grownup space”. (What I’m trying to say is that layout and neighborhood made a much bigger difference for our family than the increased square footage.)
So no, IMO a SFH in a boring subdivision is not necessary for growing family as my parents seemed to think it was.
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I have 3 kids (age 7, 10, 12) and live near Bond Park in Cary on a cul-de-sac. We moved from a neighborhood in West Raleigh where more things were in walking distance when our 1st was becoming more mobile and our 2nd was on the way.
Our house in Raleigh was on a moderately busy collector street with a big speeding problem. Living in a neighborhood where my young kids can hang out and roam the streets without fear of them getting killed by an asshole motorist has been pretty awesome.
Cars are the problem that forced our hand. The schools where we were, were fine. The house and yard were smaller but would have worked. There was a nice park nearby. I did try to look but could not really find anything in our price range closer to central Raleigh that seemed like it could provide the isolation from traffic that we were after.
It is ironic that we moved to the suburbs where we have to depend much more on cars, to get away from car traffic. It seems that most of Raleigh exists in a sort of uncanny valley where it’s not dense enough for substantial numbers of people to go car-free or car-light, but it is dense enough so that traffic and the pervasive presence of cars has a major (negative) impact on quality of life.
I would emphasize, however, that I view the conditions that got us to decamp for the suburbs as a phase. My 10 and 12 year olds, are now old enough that I would worry less about their safety in the old neighborhood - and they would be able to have more freedom there than they do here (eg to walk to the store, or park, or wherever.) My 7 year old is almost there. So that phase where I percieve there being a significant benefit to being in suburbia will wind up being about 10 years for us.
We have sort of put down roots here and through sheer inertia we will probably wind up staying, at least until the kids grow up and move out - but if we were moving to the area and looking for a house at this phase in our life we would probably look for something similar to our old neighborhood rather than where we are now.
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It’s easier for kids to find friends in neighborhoods. More of them usually. More friends=less boredom.
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We live about 1/2 mile east of Fayetteville St. down Lenoir in a SFH with a garage and roughly 1/4 acre lot. My little Dude just turned 3 months old this week and everyday I wake up with my eyes open, it’s a better day than the day before.
We are in a unique position where we will be able to walk him to and from school for both Elementary(Hunter) and Middle(Ligon), where else in Raleigh can you do the same? So we have no plans on moving until after then, although I’m not too wild about public school and everything that’s taught outside of math, science, reading, etc.
We moved downtown not looking for a better life, but to make our life easier, if that makes sense. Where can you walk to 100+ bars and restaurants, concerts, events, weddings, you name it, it usually happens downtown. Friend of ours got married at the Raleigh Little Chapel back in September and having everyone meet before at our place then walk or scooter was worth every penny.
Don’t get me started about the car dependency aspect, I love not having my car be the only means of getting food, entertainment etc. but we haven’t reduced any number of cars or anything like that, nor is that the reason we moved downtown. I still find reasons to take one of my cars out late at night for several hours so that’ll never change.
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You’re right about more friends alleviating boredom part. It’s definitely easier for them to find friends in a neighborhood over a highrise or apartment. Having more friends does lead to less boredom, although I’d caution you in viewing correlation and causation on that alone.
More friends leading to less boredom is usually a direct result of the access they have. Kid A might have an XBox. Kid B might have a pool in their backyard. Kid C might have nothing, but their presence makes these activities more fun as a group.
If all the kids were like Kid C, they’d be bored out of their minds. Put those same kids in an area close to things to do, and those things they have access to aren’t required by the kids or their parents anymore.
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Suburban neighborhoods evolve. A neighborhood of young children becomes a neighborhood of teenagers becomes a neighborhood of empty nesters. A neighborhood really can’t always be full of children because a lot of empty nesters decide to stay put.
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That’s so true. My elderly mother is still in her suburban house because she can’t afford to move and be somewhere else. The house had 6 people in when I was a kid and now it’s just her. This pattern has played out and continues to play out with 4 widows living on the same cul de sac. They will all likely be there until they pass because elder care is so expensive. Before the end of the decade, I expect all of the houses to have turned over to younger families again with kids if they aren’t bulldozed for even larger houses for the next generation of families.
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Isn’t that the truth. My childhood home is just blocks from NCSU and the Little Theater was surrounded by college students or grandparents. There was 1 other child on my block, and only about 6 others in immediate area. Campus was a great playground, when classes were not in session - my dad banned us from campus during the academic terms - we showed up one to many times at his office unannounced, lol.
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my riding habits changed. these do fit under a bus seat or small table. but are a bit pricey. i love riding this but i will throw it in the back of the car or bus usually now to ride as opposed to departing from my residence as much. it folds up even smaller than in the photo. and there are much cheaper chinese knock-offs now.
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in part…but when you go to a park and dont want to smell cannabis, etc. i can see the joy of personal lawn and garden. plant clover or blue grass this spring, etc. tinkering area iow. sure…many love the noise of urban-life and concrete and mere steps to a deli.
but sure…i used eastgate, millbrook exchange, brentwood, tailrace area at falls lake, green road parks extensively growing up. and with the bike path along the neuse many households now have a neihborhood ride to it. i also played sports at the old ymca on hillsborough and got there by bus. imo, it was this i that i liked about raleigh so much. but 480k people change things somewhat i guess.
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longview does have some large lots
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I too rode the Cat Bus after school from Fred Olds to the Hillsboro Y 2x a week for 3 or 4 years. That youth program was awesome.
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