Everyone says this, as if none of us who advocate for urban life understand having kids. I have two kids.
Also, they raise plenty of kids in other countries where they haven't oriented life around suburbs.
Also, this was more true in the United States before white flight, and the US raised plenty of healthy kids then.
So I don't think the kid thing makes as much sense as they say. But the state of US school systems does make the urban kid raising thing needlessly expensive for many.
Violence and distracting behavior in schools are bad. But school scores, prestige, etc. don't matter as much as most people think. Your home environment matters more than the school. High achieving magnets and wealthy suburban schools are that way because of the selection profile for students, not because the school itself is transformative.
Having exposure to high status schools in my own childhood, I agree 100% with your last sentence, that was one of the most important lessons I learned growing up, to completely ignore pedigree. I was in a well regarded school where pretty much everyone was an idiot. But they were born to successful people and most of them are now successful adults. Firm a proof as any that merit is either not the norm or completely doesn't exist.
Still, I think more of an effort should be made to improve US urban public schools. I don't know what the answer is. It's surely very complex. I am not a specialist.
The big difference is in other countries schools are not as bad as they are in cities in the US. Not a lot of countries have this huge divide of urban vs suburban culture.
In America, you move to the suburbs to die.
Also, they raise plenty of kids in other countries where they haven't oriented life around suburbs.
Also, this was more true in the United States before white flight, and the US raised plenty of healthy kids then.
So I don't think the kid thing makes as much sense as they say. But the state of US school systems does make the urban kid raising thing needlessly expensive for many.