The real estate is much more expensive downtown in most cases and, like many urban cores for a variety of historical reasons, you're probably stuck paying for expensive private schools if you have kids and want them to have a good education.

I live in the city, pay outrageous taxes (ie. taxes are about equal to my mortgage), and now my son is 4. So I'm faced with sending him to a school district with lousy outcomes and no budget, sending him to Catholic school, or moving to the burbs where they have sponsored robot teams and some of the best schools in the state.

You can't send your son to school in the 'burbs without moving there?

Not in the US. Public schools are funded and managed by the local governments (usually county or city). So, only residents of those locales get to attend.

You could send a child to a private school in the suburbs, but that's doesn't gain you anything over sending the kid to a private school closer to home. Plus, it costs an additional $6000+/year. That's tuition at my local Catholic high school; it's an average school, no better than the publics in the same area.

<outsider's shrug> From a policy perspective it seems to be a no-brainer then to move school financing to the state level, at least for a part of the schools.

It really needs to be all or nothing, otherwise you're just giving the districts more spending power.

State budgets are abstract, and it's easy for school boards to ask for more money over time.

You can in my state, but we'd have to politick to do it, and the cost is more than private school. And the private school is a better investment (smaller class size, less common core) at that price.

I see this as a serious gap in most places. They are building loads of apartments near me- all one or two bedrooms. It's very rare to see a three bedroom, and almost never four.

That's because the customary cultural expectation in America seems to be that by the time you have any use for 3+ bedrooms, you'll buy a freestanding house in the suburbs. Accordingly, there's little demand for large apartments.

3+ BR apartments are fairly table stakes in central and Eastern Europe. It's still a culture shock to me to be unable to find one here in the US, and I've lived here since I was six!

Yes, but not many, and they sell for premium prices. They are often sold a "penthouse" units, only on the top few floors.

They are frequently aimed at retirees downsizing from even larger free-standing homes. Or, wealthy buyers looking for an urban crash-pad, in addition to their mansion outside the city center.

edit - a quick search of Washington DC shows 14 units available with 3+ bedrooms and <$700,000. Of those, about half are in really rough neighborhoods, where no professional likely to move.