Young people

There’s nothing quite like listening to a preeminent expert in pediatric injury prevention telling you you’re taking unnecessary risks with your child’s life.

For a long time in the United States, driving activity moved in step with the economy. Since economic growth was fairly steady, consistent growth in driving was built into all the traffic modeling the engineers used to plan and build streets and transportation infrastructure.

According to a spate of recent studies, Millennials -- a bigger generation than the Baby Boomers -- are driving less than their parents did. But the underlying reasons are a matter of some dispute. Will younger Americans start happily motoring again once the economy is really humming, or is a lasting generational shift underway?

More than 9,000 babies have been born in each of the last five years in Washington, DC -- but will their families stay in the city as these kids grow up? A recent study by the real estate company Trulia found that there was just one zip code in DC's city limits where backpacks outnumbered strollers. Wealthy, west-of-the-park Chevy Chase has more kids in the 5-9 age group than 0-4. Every other part of the city has more babies and toddlers than school-age kids.

Two weeks ago, I posted some thoughts on raising kids in cities and right away, the comments section and Twitter lit up with a fruitful discussion of urban and car-lite parenting.

All of a sudden, I feel like all anyone is talking about is whether it’s a good idea to raise kids in the city. I’m raising a kid in the city. I feel great about it when she has a blast on the back of the bike, or makes friends on the bus, or gets excited about pressing the beg button at the corner. I feel a little less certain when we toddle down the sidewalk and come upon guys peeing on the dumpster or passed out on the stoop. When I look at the test scores for our neighborhood schools, I get a knot in my stomach.

Madison, Wisconsin, is on a building binge. Developers are constructing so much rental housing that market observers fear that the housing shortage could quickly turn into a glut. One thousand units were approved last year for large apartment complexes.

Poor Ford.