Age Segregation an American Reality

Re “A City Losing Its Children,” June 7: As a parent in nearby family-friendly Berkeley, I read your article on “child-hostile” San Francisco with some unease. Certainly San Francisco should do everything it can for children, who are disproportionately among the city’s remaining poor residents. However, the American reality is that many communities are bad places for some age groups.

Teenagers and young adults do not fare well in monotonously residential suburbs, which roll up the sidewalks at 6 p.m. (if they have sidewalks at all). These suburbs are also bad places for senior citizens, many of whom are forced to continue driving long after they would like to stop. There are a few, mostly older, communities like Berkeley that provide a wide range of living environments for people at different stages of life. But so long as land use is basically determined by profit-motivated developers building for narrowly targeted niche markets, segregation by age will accompany other forms of segregation. Let’s not lay all the blame for this at the city of San Francisco’s feet.

Nathan Landau

Berkeley

San Francisco restaurateur Elisabeth Ramsey was quoted as saying, “The weather, the beauty of it (San Francisco), the international sense of it, the European city feel, all of that attracts people who think like Europeans.” Translation: San Francisco remains, as it has always been, the only First World city in California.

Michael Snider

Santa Monica