Sydney Housing : Does high density housing make you infertile?

Joel Kotlin is an expert in city living and has studied trends of cities  and fertility rates around the World. But is he right about Sydney’s high density housing making you infertile ?

I say no, and for several reasons.

1. Firstly Australia’s fertility rate has been dropping since the pill was introduced.
2. Secondly people are choosing to put off child rearing much later in the pursuit of career goals .
3. Professional people tend to have less kids than the overall population.

Lets get one thing straight Joel Kotlin isn’t saying that living in a high rise apartment, affects your ability to have children. He seems to be saying that is you build those dwellings then people won’t want to have children there. 

He is suggesting that we should plan for children friendly suburbs close to cities.

This is at odds in my view with his assertion that turning leafy suburbs into high density housing areas is stifling the population growth.

You could have had the same argument when these leafy suburbs were turned from market gardens or farms into residential housing estate. Farming families would have tended to be larger in this days I guess than people living in the suburbs.

The fact is that people choosing high density living are not ready to have or start a family in the near term.

I would also suggest that many or even most people living in these developments are renting, not buying. Mobility is an important asset to young professionals. They could get promotions offered or change employers many times, and it would not make sense to buy a home till you are settled in your career.

So If you choose to live like that then you are not interested in having children at that point in time so several reasons.
Claiming that Sydney’s inner suburbs are being turned into place not conducive to bringing up families is true in one sense, expect that our cities are dynamic and still growth, and being shaped by the needs of the people that live there. That includes infrastructure needs.

Do young professionals want to have kids or even get married?

The answer is probably, yes, but not right now. So high density living that shaves 10 hours a week or more off your commute to work makes sense.
When you’re ready to have kids, buy a home in the suburbs. Whats wrong with that?
People no longer buy a home and stay there for ever. The perception that this expert has given is that a home makes you infertile. But its the persons plans that make them “infertile”, and part of that plan is buying or renting an apartment convenient to work, which may change several times over the coming years.
There is a difference in thinking that planning and building high density homes, and living in those homes effects your fertility. Its the other way round. People that don’t want kids choose to live in these homes.

Joel also says that Sydney needed suburbia for families as it faced a “grey tsunami” of retiring boomers and a low fertility rate of 2 per cent. That would be true of Japan also.

Saying that Sydney’s planning laws tended to favour high-rise developments concentrated closer to city centres is consistent with what people want from their dwellings. Low maintenance, close to transport, so a car is not required, and quick commute to work, saving 10 hours or more in commute time.

His claim that”Where you have high amounts of high-density housing you have very low birth rates … where you have density, you tend to have very few children.”, is entirely consistent with what young people want from housing today. Kids are not on the radar.

Mr Mortgage