our next guest has a popular blog called, five kids one condo
And he is a strong advocate for urban living please, welcome Adrian Crook
Obviously i am passionate about cities and raising kids in them you have to be to live with
Five kids in a 1000 square foot condo a few blocks from here
And i'm here tonight to talk about some of the reasons i'm passionate, about that but, also
Some of the ways, we can, maybe make the city better for kids, and we've only got seven minutes so i'm gonna
Jump right through this when i practice this with, my daughters it was quite a bit longer so
One of the reasons i love living in vancouver and in cities in general and raising kids in cities is
Diversity, what you see here is the time, we took, some socks down to the downtown
Eastside and gave them out to downtown eastside residents and it was fantastic the the
Conversations that that started
Around bedtime you know, why, do they need, socks so how, do they get to be homeless
You know homeless people are not a prop i don't want to use them that way but in this case this
was this and this constant exposure to the diversity of cities is fantastic for children
The heterogeneous nature of our city, is what gives it its color and is representative of humanity
And independent mobility is another fantastic thing to teach young kids, we get around? By bus, we get around
by, bicycle train as you can, see there that's on the way to summer camp i taught
My, kids I spent two years teaching, my kids how, to take the bus actually and it's a fantastic gift of confidence for children
and then
Simplicity really living in the city sort of pears everything back this is my daughter sort of my youngest daughter cleaning out of the table
with a vacuum cleaner
We can, take our whole place to completely clean in about 30 minutes and that leaves a
Whole lot of time for the first to focus on important things relationships relationships with, each other and
Moving on a little bit
The things that I think could be improved from a family and city perspective in Vancouver
you can, probably recognize, this this is
Robson square in the 8 months of the year that it's not used
An ice rink the ice rink portion of robson square and this to my kids is like a cardboard, box to a cat
It's an awesome unprogrammed space it's a wild space for you know it's not really wild
But to them it's a blank slate and there are a few places like this in this city
And that's kind of the problem there are a few places and when you go to the?
suburbs or maybe further out there might, be that empty lot, and
You can, find junk on it and you can
Play, forever in that i mean that's what kids like and in a city in this city, and other cities, we don't necessarily have
Many of those on program spaces
Also one of the comments i get the most on the blog is just wait until they're teenagers people are desperate to tell me that
This is not gonna work, when they're teenagers and they
may Be right you know the last couple of months i begin to think they are but that those are teenagers for you
But third places the importance of third
Places that places that aren't school or and they aren't work in an adult case they're libraries community centers parks
Places that kids can get out to for free or for low-cost
options to entertain themselves are so important
When you just need to get away from your siblings and the you know
The four, walls they're only so big and that and that's something, we could really do a lot more of in the city
Because it is so expensive to live in the city getting those kind of free options
Is that social equity piece that sort of escaped out from our four walls if you're, gonna, ask. People, who live in such a small
small space and
another issue
We have is you know Vancouver's
Consistently talked about as being a lonely city, there are numerous sort of studies that come out that tell us were lonely
I've taken out an ad in our buildings lobby on more than one occasion saying playdates wanted
you know so it's hard to make those connections and pets are those things that often are the surrogates for those connections and and
This, for any renters i'm a renter for any renters in the room this is a tough thing to find a place that allows pets
And these are the pets you know, we're not allowed to have pets in our buildings so these are fictional rats
We'll just keep this a secret to this room
But they're the necessary, vital parts of our family fabric and and if we're gonna make
If we're gonna make a goal of it as families in a city, we need to do a, better job of allowing pet friendly rentals
And a lot of people talk, about sharing economy and i'm not you know
When they talk about airbnb and uber and yeah you know i have my, own thoughts
About that but the real sharing economy is things that
We share for free we share because it's mutually beneficial and this is a vancouver based service called part-time pooch
And this is friday the basset hound and it's very a very reciprocal sort of arrangement?
We have where we take friday out and he benefits and his owner benefits and we benefit but
We have none of the downstream costs of dog, ownership, which is fantastic and you know
These kind of services and you see them, also like in toolshed sort of arrangements make it possible for families living in small places
to get by without having to acquire like a radial arm saw or something silly like that that you're only, going to use once
And you know Friday's been a fantastic pal for us
and
Getting towards the end here last but not least it takes a village to raise a child, and right now, we build
We don't really build, villages here in Vancouver we build silos with, like towers
Where for you know
Individual floors are fobbed off you can't get to to your neighbor necessarily or we build attached houses and they're you know
Three to five million dollars that's not really family entry priced
and this is
Actually a fantastic example and it's unfortunately the only example in Vancouver this is Vancouver cohousing on 33rd
between
Knight and Victoria I guess
My friend Rachel lives in this building it was three city lots and it was combined those three lots were combined and now houses
75 people in about 31 units
It's got fantastic amenities i can, barely read them here but i remember correctly it's like lounge team room you know
Bike room communal kitchen it's it's the way, we should be living if we're gonna sustain ourselves and sustain our social relationships?
and this is
Ironically the hardest thing for us to build in the city right now and it should be the easiest thing things like purpose
built rentals, social housing cohousing
Seniors housing, these are for some reason the hardest thing for us to build
We either build towers like i said or detached houses and if we want families to stay in this city
We need, to build more of these and we need to make this the simplest thing for us to build
when I posted images of this on my instagram
It was the most comments I ever had you know i posted stories and people were like how
Can I live there they were desperate to live there
And that's telling I mean the city is crying out for this type of solution to you know
Not just families but singles and seniors and everyone i mentioned so this is hugely important in our future
so
Quick, summary i'm very close to out of time
There you know Vancouver still has its flaws but there is a lot to say
yes to in Vancouver there are a lot of really positive things and
It's an you know unfortunately a luxury it seems like these
Days to raise a kid have raised kids five of them and in my case in downtown vancouver but, there are things, we can
do to make it less so of a luxury and more of a right and
And i hope to make that up and help to make that happen thanks a lot for your time today
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