Moving to Ohio and considering Dayton

[wrightflyer]

Originally Posted by ohio_peasant

This is true. There’s Dorothy Lane Market, places to get gyros and so on. Mom-and-pop Chinese food restaurants. Even good Mexican food. The real discomfort that I felt while living in Ohio, wasn’t the dearth of amenities, but the lack of consonance with my Fellow Man. It just wasn’t “my people”. Beavercreek, which seems to be emerging as the subject of this thread, has McMansions which wouldn’t be out of place in Fairfax County, Virginia. But who lives there? That’s where the tensions emerge.

Local variations are also large. Even driving across say Kettering, the differences are shocking, between the part bordering Oakwood and the part towards Riverside. Northwest from the shopping-center with Trader Joe’s, it feels like the better parts of Pasadena, CA. On the opposite side of town, it feels like a set from a Public Television investigative special on the decline of Middle America.

But pervading it all, or nearly all, is a traditionalist cleaving to family and religious observance. This is a cultural conservatism, orthogonal to how we feel about taxation, environmentalism and other pressing political issues. Child-free people, atheists, the hard-charging entrepreneurial start-up types… would be out of place. Instead it’s a place to get married and to raise kids.

Over on the Los Angeles forum, where now I spend considerable time, there are frequent new threads, about such-and-such family moving to LA, looking for a certain environment. Kids, schools, safety, crime, backyards, clean air, plentiful water, OK commute. No mention of going to the beach in January. Of chess tournaments. Of places where to read one’s poetry. Of finding a community where people speak Farsi, or Armenian, or Russian. Without barbs or crass offense against either Dayton or Los Angeles, I can’t help wondering: why is this family moving to LA? Wouldn’t they be happier in Centerville or Beavercreek?

Funny you mention Pasadena. That would be a fun comparison to Kettering. Both cities have very wealthy and more older housing stock, working class sides to them. Of course, Cal Tech in Pasadena makes a big difference in the city, and Pasadena could be an edge city case, where Kettering is a bedroom/factory town that is really and always has been a bedroom suburb of Dayton. So, while on the surface they seem similar, I think a better comparison would probably be Burbank and Kettering. Or Glendale and Kettering. Or portions of Burbank/Glendale and Kettering. That portion of LA blurs together a bit for me.

I think it comes down to not only schools and COL/QOL, but the job opportunities of the parents and the industries they work in. For international families relocating to the USA, Los Angeles will have a huge draw over a place like Dayton for those from Armenia, Iran, Russia, and other parts of the world between the Black Sea and the Persian Gulf. Those diasporas (and others in the LA area) will attract others from the same corner of the world because they will find easier entry into opportunities with people that they have a similar culture to or way-of-life with. It is simply human nature. You only have to look at the growth of nearby Columbus, Ohio's, Somali population to see a closer-to-home example. As for the relos to LA, people always want those short commutes with good schools at a ridiculously unreal and way too low price point in large mega metros. Unfortunately, it comes down to the old adage, you want three things, but I can only deliver on two. Which two do you want? It is a reason my parents left DC in the late 80s to come to Dayton (and you guessed it, raise a family.

Inverse of that Los Angeles foreign resident example, a lot of Indian and Pakastani families move to Beavercreek or other Dayton metro suburbs because of the research and engineering opportunities offered to those professions from the AFRL or WPAFB Materials Command positions. Local universities help with that attraction too. In turn, that also attracts other people from those corners of the world due to research funding and people of similar backgrounds already living here. Beavercreek has seen an increasing minority population in the city itself, especially among Asian residents. Beavercreek's diversity is spotty though (most places with growing populations of diverse people tend to be haphazardly spread across an area). The older (I can't believe I am saying that as I am even older than those developments and remember when they opened and were built...) areas around the Fairfield Mall with the apartments and townhomes and parts of Knollwood and NW portions of Beavercreek are seeing turnover in housing and units as they age to families from (prepare for the shocking look on Beavercreek old-timers!) minority backgrounds. As those changes continue to progress over the next decade, I expect city council in Beavercreek to become more diverse as time moves forward. I think this is where the overall tension you mention comes from. Older areas with older residents don't like change (I see it on the Facebook nostalgia groups for Beavercreek). Well, I think that isn't coming from the McMansion dwellers. It comes from the old, retired folks in the 1950-1970 ranch developments that are seeing remodels and then new residents move in. It is still shocking to see the development I first lived in Beavercreek having remodeled ranches sell for over 300K (my parents moved to a "McMansion" in 2000 and sold that ranch for 134K).

I do wish I could recall or find a National Geographic article from the early 2000's that actually spotlighted Beavercreek as one of the places for changing demographics in suburban USA. It was focused on the growing Hispanic presence in the United States in general and talked about families moving to safer neighborhoods and better schools in suburbs to get away from crime and urban blight. While the Hispanic population itself is still rather small in Beavercreek at 3.4%, there have been changes in demographics over the last 20 years. From 2020 census data, the city is about 82% White non-Hispanic. A large part of that is driven by answers of Asian (6%) and Two or More Races (5%) in the 2020 survey. The White non-Hispanic population has dropped by roughly 10% while the city itself has grown by about 10K new residents.

One item I do disagree with to an extent that was mentioned upthread is WPAFB does not have the same hard-core militaristic conservatism of some other military towns due to the fact it is primarily an operations, logistics and research institution. Outside the 88th Medical Lift Wing, the jobs at WPAFB are more technical in nature (and even the 88th is probably more technical than Bomber, Air Lift or Air Fighter wings elsewhere). Living around WPAFB will have the military element to local life (especially in Beavercreek, Riverside, Huber Heights or Fairborn), but not to the same degree as a Columbus, Georgia. Or Sumter, South Carolina. Or Fayetteville, North Carolina. Or Jacksonville, North Carolina. Or even parts of San Diego or San Antonio. You travel to those smaller cities/towns (sans larger SD and SA) that are solely based economically on military and defense industries and then compare to Dayton and WPAFB, and there is a notable difference in lifestyle choices of the local residents. That is my observations from my job when I travelled across the US and happened upon military towns.

[ohio_peasant]

Originally Posted by wrightflyer

Funny you mention Pasadena. That would be a fun comparison to Kettering. Both cities have very wealthy and more older housing stock, working class sides to them.

Pasadena's working-class is overwhelmingly Hispanic, or other ethnicities that "the mainstream" identifies with newcomers. It is not the hammer-and-forge traditional blue collar set. That makes a huge difference in culture.

Originally Posted by wrightflyer

For international families relocating to the USA, Los Angeles will have a huge draw over a place like Dayton...

Yup. For me it was a mix of language, the shared immigrant experience, and the cultural attitudes. An example of the latter, which I think is common to most immigrants but absent in most "natives", is a veneration for the capital city and a skepticism (bordering on contempt) for the provinces. Persons born in America, and especially those whose ancestors for some generations were born in America, view the big-city askance, as corrupt, crime-ridden, dirty and unpleasant... it is, broadly, the inverse of the immigrant view.

The origin of this dichotomy, I think, is that for centuries in America it was possible for commoners to own land. In most of the rest of the world, agricultural workers were landless. They were outright serfs, or sharecroppers, or peasants in the broad sense. The peasantry was lamentable... something from which the more enterprising sons and daughters would seek to escape. The American version of the peasant, meanwhile, was something to which to aspire. Today, the Heartland is more "peasant", whereas the Coasts tend to more resemble the European attitude of 1900.

Originally Posted by wrightflyer

Unfortunately, it comes down to the old adage, you want three things, but I can only deliver on two. Which two do you want? It is a reason my parents left DC in the late 80s to come to Dayton (and you guessed it, raise a family.

Some of my formative years were spent in the DC suburbs. Mine was perhaps the last generation to regard the Midwest as hotbed of engineering and technical activity, whereas the East Coast was a place to push paper, to sue people and to run advertising firms. Moving from DC to the Midwest for one's career seemed reasonable, if one wanted an Edison-Wright-Kettering type of "maker" career, instead of a genteel and staid 3-piece-suit career. What I didn't realize was the by-then emerging economic decline, and the staunchly traditional-conservative culture.

Originally Posted by wrightflyer

One item I do disagree with to an extent that was mentioned upthread is WPAFB does not have the same hard-core militaristic conservatism of some other military towns due to the fact it is primarily an operations, logistics and research institution. Outside the 88th Medical Lift Wing, the jobs at WPAFB are more technical in nature ...

One of the reasons for the difference between Fairborn and Beavercreek, is that the former hosts the "operations" part of the base (Areas A and C), while the latter is more the technical part (Area B). You're right about the difference between the two. But there is overlap between military-style culture and Heartland-style culture. San Diego, as you noted, has a heavy operational military presence. And yet, San Diego is also home to one of America's largest nude beaches. Not even Los Angeles has that. Can you imagine something similar in SW Ohio?

[indy_317]

Originally Posted by ohio_peasant

Over on the Los Angeles forum, where now I spend considerable time, there are frequent new threads, about such-and-such family moving to LA, looking for a certain environment. Kids, schools, safety, crime, backyards, clean air, plentiful water, OK commute. No mention of going to the beach in January. Of chess tournaments. Of places where to read one’s poetry. Of finding a community where people speak Farsi, or Armenian, or Russian. Without barbs or crass offense against either Dayton or Los Angeles, I can’t help wondering: why is this family moving to LA? Wouldn’t they be happier in Centerville or Beavercreek?

Given that the family is wanting to move to a place with year round reasonable weather and a place close to amazing outdoor opportunities, then I'd say no, they wouldn't be happier likely anywhere in the lower Midwest. For me, I'd be asking, "Wouldn't they be happier in a Knoxville, TN, Charlotte NC, or Greenville, SC type area?" Fairly moderate winter weather, either in or very close to amazing outdoor recreation, or at least just a half days drive. If one has a decent income or huge savings, I can't say LA would be a no go for a family unit, but I agree the actual city of LA does seem odd. Would the family unit be better suited for the Inland Empire area out there? What about Sacramento?