[achou]

In the last 18 months I've lived with 2 kids in a condo in SF with a car, a downtown condo in an Asian megacity without a car, and in suburban silicon valley with a car and large yard. For us, by FAR the best quality of life has been in the suburbs.

Having a yard is exceptionally valuable with kids. They can be free to run around, play yard games, explore - all without draining the emotional reserves of parents. You can do this while you make dinner, work, or do other things that are unrealistic at an urban park. And you can play with them too. It is not that expensive to get someone to care for your yard if you have some financial flexibility.

In a family there are many kind of resources - time, money, energy, emotional reserves. Scarcity in the first two are easy to focus on because they're quantitative. But scarcity in the latter two - especially emotional reserves - is actually the limited resource in many families. Having to deal with the stresses of children (even if they are mostly well behaved!) puts a real strain on relationships. And the friction from an urban environment, especially one like SF which is not child-friendly, or a giant megacity that has very high density, just drains away the scarcest resources that a family like mine actually has.

If you have some financial flexibility and need serenity and quiet to be your best, combining kids with an urban environment in exchange for spending less is a very poor allocation of resources. It's an example of optimizing for the thing you can easily measure, instead of what's truly important.