22 ms·

Peak Millennial? Cities Can’t Assume a Continued Boost from the Young

158 points by lr 10y ago

toodlebunions 10y ago
Eventually they will settle down and move to the burbs.
- jonknee 10y ago
  Will they? Baby boomers are moving into cities too.
  - jdmichal 10y ago
    ... Because their kids are grown and moved out. So they no longer need the space suburbs provide and can move closer to the employment and entertainment available in the city.
- shostack 10y ago
  Not in the Bay Area they won't unless you mean maybe East Bay. The Peninsula is quite often more expensive for housing. And you need to drive everywhere.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
forkandwait 10y ago
In this debate, we should look to cities in other countries. As I understand it, Paris/ Vancouver/ London/ Tokyo etc have never been subject to the "rule" that young couples move to the suburbs once they are ready to raise families. Nor are they subject to the rule that cities are dangerous and have bad schools. If we can fix schools and crime, like other civilized nations, then there is no reason to believe people will move out of cities once they reach a certain age.
- iojdnfjg 10y ago
  > In this debate, we should look to cities in other countries. As I understand it, Paris/ Vancouver/ London/ Tokyo etc have never been subject to the "rule" that young couples move to the suburbs once they are ready to raise families. A small family home in Vancouver proper will run you 750k+. The median individual income is $27,600 in Canada. When you do the math you realize 95% of the population simply can't afford to live in big cities unless they rent, which makes it harder to buy a home in the future.
- pc86 10y ago
  You say "fix schools and crime" like it is known empirically what to do. It is not as simple as pumping money into the districts. France, Canada, England, Japan and other "civilized nations" debate how best to fund schools and fight crime just like the US.
  - simonsarris 10y ago
    To add credence to your point, this headline from last week: "Obama administration spent billions to fix failing schools, and it didn’t work" https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/obama-administration-spent-billions-to-fix-failing-schools-and-it-didnt-work/2017/01/19/6d24ac1a-de6d-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/obama-adminis...
    - mastax 10y ago
      And here's an alternative solution: re-integration https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/...
      - yareally 10y ago
        Moving students around schools in an attempt to equalize race and poverty levels isn't a new concept and it's been tried before (and possibly still done in some states/cities). They tried forced busing of students to schools across the cities in Ohio back in the 70s and 80s to equalize school demographics. Parents moved in droves to the suburbs and Ohio cities only started recovering in the past 10 years after the program was ended in the 90s. No one wanted their children to go to a school 40 minutes away when there was a perfectly good one within walking distance. If one still thinks this is a viable solution, how is it going to going to avoid the mistakes of previous attempts? Last thing the cities here need is a mass migration back to the suburbs when the cities have just started turning around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_City_Schools#1977_Desegregation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_City_Schools#1977_Des... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing
pizzetta 10y ago
Living with roommates and living in small quarters as well as spending half of your money on housing is okay when you are single and having fun exploring your self and your potential and direction --but once people have children equations change and living in the city becomes less possible --mostly because of the lack of "family-centric" housing stock --whether detached units or multi-bedroom condos and apartment units along with city amenities for kids as well as good school systems. In SF, for example, bad school districts is a very big reason for people to leave for better districts --some parents of means will remain but put their kids in private schools, obviously that does not scale.
- msrpotus 10y ago
  There's no rule that says that rich cities will continue to have bad schools. To take one counter example, there are plenty of well-off parents in NYC who send their kids to public schools because New York has built a number of public schools that are good (not enough, to be fair, but enough that there are plenty of families here). The same could happen in San Francisco.
  - scurvy 10y ago
    One problem is that SF doesn't have a gifted and talented program until near high school (and the junior highs are terrible across the board). Even with more schools, the school board would mismanage them. It's easier just to move than it is to fight an entrenched bureaucracy.
  - pizzetta 10y ago
    Of course, but given that in the SF example, at least, the proportion of the pop under 18yoa is very low, so that more or less will result in fewer resources dedicated to education. If the proportion under 18yoa of people were increasing we'd see an investment for the future --but given the characteristics of housing stock in SF, we're not likely to see the proportion of under 18yoa increase significantly in the near future.
    - scurvy 10y ago
pbnjay 10y ago
I live/work near two small towns with efforts to "revitalize" their small downtowns. They're doing a lot of the right things to attract young professionals, but both of them are investing in small 1-, maybe 2-bedroom apartments and not apartments large enough for families. If the numbers are similar even for larger cities then I'm not surprised why people move out to the burbs - a 1 bedroom apartment gets very cramped with kids - especially when you don't live somewhere like NYC/SF with enough parks/amenities around.
fovc 10y ago
Why is it that suburban living is so much cheaper? It's never been clear to me why that should be the case (from first principles). With the greater density (3x according to [1]), you'd expect lower utilities, transportation, etc. costs. "Shelter" (i.e., housing minus utilities, furniture, etc.) is typically only a bit more than transportation as a category of spend, and about 1/5 of total annual expenditures.[2] I've read claims that suburban property taxes are artificially low (mainly on articles on HN, but can't seem to find any right now) and obviously funding highways and commuter rail out of general taxes subsidizes sprawl. I wonder how this cost comparison would look from a balance of system perspective as is, and then what a higher land tax would do. Has anyone seen or done anything like this? [1] http://www.demographia.com/db-intlsub.htm http://www.demographia.com/db-intlsub.htm [2] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm
- pswenson 10y ago
  property value is much higher in cities than burbs due to supply/demand
- neonnoodle 10y ago
  Maybe you should add "supply and demand" to your list of first principles.
  - fovc 10y ago
    Well, sure, but supply of what and demand of what? Housing? Like I said, that's only about 20% of the average American's spending. But why does demand outpace supply so much in cities? Is it that building apartments and condos is so much more expensive than building suburban homes? And if so, by how much (seeing as it's only 20% of the total)
    - ghaff 10y ago
      >But why does demand outpace supply so much in cities? Some cities. (And, more specifically, some parts of some cities.) I'm sure it's not hard to find inexpensive housing in many areas of Detroit, to give one example. It really boils down to demand and land value, which is a particular problem in cities that can't just spread out further.
Decade 10y ago
As usual, the NY Times sees an actual phenomenon, but fails to understand it. Softening rents? That’s because you have a limited resource of people willing and able to pay $3000 to $5000 for a single bedroom apartment. It doesn’t take much construction to saturate that market. The problem there is that housing is so insanely difficult to build in a place like New York or San Francisco. There are far more people who can pay $1000 for 1 bedroom, or $3000 for 4 bedrooms (roommates, typically), and it would be insane to ignore that market. But abusive zoning laws and the capricious permit process ensure that that price of housing would be unprofitable. So the big developers and financiers wait until the market goes to insanity levels before making a little boom of construction. We need to reform housing, allowing increased density and by-right permit approvals, and then the little guy has a chance to build affordable housing.
- kevinstubbs 10y ago
  Is there any merit to the argument that increasing population density will make bad traffic exponentially worse?
  - wutbrodo 10y ago
    I can't imagine there wouldn't be, which is why a sane transit policy is also required. It's a slightly over-simplified but fairly-explanatory model to say that every mile traveled in a car is a failure of transit policy.
  - erispoe 10y ago
    No. Because increased density goes with less reliance on individual cars. The majority of people (by far) in NY or SF don't have a car already. Traffic is not bad in the densest cities of the western world, because we have much more efficient ways of moving people around: public transit. But you also need density to sustain public transit. So you have sour spot where there's not enough density to have good public transit, but enough to create bad traffic. Edit: see below, it's actually the majority of new households that don't have a car in many large American cities, except for NYC, in majority car-free.
AstralStorm 10y ago
Why say millennial when you mean yuppie?
edblarney 10y ago
Millenials are not very young anymore :)
- amyjess 10y ago
  Millennials were born 1982-2004. The youngest Millennials are still in junior high. Generations are always ~20 years or so. Gen X was 1961-1981, Boomers were 1943-1960, Silents were 1925-1942, GIs were 1901-1924, etc.
  - jarboot 10y ago
    > Millennials were born 1982-2004 What source are you getting this from? Looking at wikipedia, a lot of them put the beginning of Gen Z at ~1995-98. As someone fitting into this bracket (I don't remember 9/11), I'd say it's accurate to loosely define the cutoff for Millennials as somebody who remembered 9/11, was in the labor force during the great recession, or was socially active during Web 1.0. Gen Z doesn't remember life without the internet, grew up on Facebook/Instagram (vs. primarily chatrooms, forums, etc.), and didn't have as much experience with desktop computers for leisure in leu of phones. This is just my observation as someone who has seen and is currently engaging with a spectrum of youth in the school system. Thoughts?
    - amyjess 10y ago
      It comes from Strauss-Howe Generational Theory. Strauss and Howe coined the term "Millennial", so I'll take them at their word for the size of the cohort. Here's a table from Neil Howe's website: http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/timelines/generations.html http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/timelines/generations... And a Wikipedia article with an overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio... Source for Strauss and Howe coining "Millennial": http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/advertising/story/2012-05-03/naming-the-next-generation/54737518/1 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/advertising/story/2012-... > "No one knows who will name the next generation," says Neil Howe, who, along with his deceased co-author and business partner, William Strauss, is widely credited with naming the Millennials, a generation he figures spans from about 1982 to 2004.
jartelt 10y ago
Several of my friends are considering moving from SF and other popular places on the peninsula to Half Moon Bay (or somewhere like it). When rent for your 2 bedroom apartment goes over $3,000, you notice that you are basically paying the equivalent of the monthly mortgage payment on a $750,000 house. Then, you realize you may be having kids in a few years and will probably want a small yard and no shared walls. Of course, you then must start saving like mad so you can get the ~$100k needed for the down payment on your $800k fixer upper.
- sjg007 10y ago
  Half Moon Bay is not that much cheaper...
  - jartelt 10y ago
    True, it's not THAT much cheaper, but it's a place where can actually find a 3 bedroom / 2 bathroom standalone home for <$1M in the bay area that is within 45 minutes of most jobs. When you can only afford a $800k mortgage, your options are severely limited.
- juliangoldsmith 10y ago
  >When rent for your 2 bedroom apartment goes over $3,000, you notice that you are basically paying the equivalent of the monthly mortgage payment on a $750,000 house. Jesus Christ. It would be very difficult to even spend that much money on a house or apartment near where I live, outside Charlotte, NC.
- spaceflunky 10y ago
  Half Moon Bay seems like a good idea, until everyone starts having the same "good idea" as you and then the tiny back country roads coming into and out of Half Moon Bay turn a 45min commute into a 1h30min commute and you're back at square one. These 'clever hacks' are not sustainable solutions to the bigger problem at hand.
rconti 10y ago
>Here’s one thing we know: People get older. Another is that people’s tolerance for entry-level jobs and small urban apartments is highest when they are young adults. I'm not clear on why they think entry level jobs result in city living. If anything, the cost of living makes it seem like it would be the opposite.
AllanWrench 10y ago
Big cities are going to die. For decades, they voted themselves nonexistent money to prop up corrupt politicians, greedy unions, and provide corporate welfare. Now it's coming home to roost and the rest of us don't care. One big datapoint here is the most recent election: Trump won several thousand counties to Clinton's several hundred. This was mimiced up- and down the ballot and was almost perfectly divided as a cities vs. everyone else thing. You cannot escape economic reality no matter what the vote buyers think.
- tossraccount333 10y ago
  Counties are of varying density. Winning a lot of them is in no way indicative of how many voters were on a candidates side. It's already well discussed that Trump did well in rural counties. I don't know what you're trying to argue? Trump lost the popular vote by ~3 million. With the electoral college, winning counties and the popular vote don't matter. As a city dweller, I could sit back and say rural areas are going to die too. They're shrinking, mostly over 50, and the rest of us don't care that they failed to adapt to the changing world and instead dug their heels in, expecting everyone else to build the world in their vision. I grew up in Trumplandia; this was the rhetoric there, from the trailer trash to the local leaders. The world should just leave us alone, we don't care. Except they would start caring if all those urban ports started cutting them off from goods. Which is just pointless rhetoric, lacking empathy. Let's draw deeper, longer lines in the sand. Let's continue instigating division between populations. Yeah OK, that'll lead to more positive outcomes for either side.
- mratzloff 10y ago
  There are more people in the urban counties than the sparsely-populated rural counties. Cities are growing and are expected to continue growing. Meanwhile, rural areas are dying.[0] What reality do you think people are trying to escape? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depopulation_of_the_Great_Plains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depopulation_of_the_Great_Plai...
  - drak0n1c 10y ago
    A few decades from now I can see the trend reversing. If automation makes living in small to medium sized towns in the country more convenient, lots of people who currently flock to cities out of economic necessity will prefer a less crowded life.
amyjess 10y ago
My cousin (born in 1980; just barely on the Gen-X side of the line between Xers and Millennials) lives in Manhattan and has two kids. She told me not too long ago that she's planning on moving out to the suburbs pretty soon because they just don't have enough room. Their apartment is one of the smallest two-bedrooms I've seen, and it took some creative work to stick two cribs in the kids' room. I doubt they'll still be living in the city by the end of this year.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  The ceilings are at least 8 feet high, right? The solution is simple: stacked cribs! You have to think vertically in NYC.
CodeSheikh 10y ago
A whole article on an actual phenomenon. Allow me to explain in plain English. People born in 1981-1999 are getting older and moving out of cities. Thus reversing a trend that was never meant to be ever-increasing.
spaceflunky 10y ago
On the surface, I agree with the author's reasoning that eventually many millennials will "grow-up" and want suburban homes for their kids with better schools. And this makes sense because it would follow trends in the past. However the author is missing a couple key components that lead me to believe the future will not be like the past. For example... 1.) In the past there were suburbs to move to. For example, in the 80s and 90s, Contra Costa (Walnut Creek, Danville, etc) were being developed as a viable suburb to SF. However, as far as I know there are no new suburbs being developed that provide a reasonable commute time or distance from SF. 2.) Of the suburbs that exists, those that are a reasonable commute time from major hubs are still pretty expensive. Again Walnut Creek maintains its value quite well. So it's not really a "cheaper option" from the city. 3.) Baby Boomers are living longer and staying in their suburb homes longer, which doesn't give an opportunity for millennials looking to start a family to move in. I've long since thought that instead of building new suburbs, we should be looking for options to move empty-nesters from their 4-bedroom homes that they don't need anymore. All of my friends parents still live in their suburban homes because they have no other options for the most part. 4.) Author assumes all millennials are waiting to have kids. (They're not.) 5.) We have plain old population growth to rely on. Cities collapsed in the past because there were places for people to go and a relatively smaller population. I strongly feel that we've exhausted a lot of those options while our population continues to grow strongly (at least in the US). Therefore, cities will remain full simply because of lack of other options and population growth (both by birth and immigration).
dcchambers 10y ago
I find it interesting that people in this thread are quick to point out that you might not save much money when you move to the suburbs because of transit and extra time costs. I think people are failing to realize a large people do (and I plan to soon) move to the 'burbs is because they can OWN a house. Even if owning won't save money over renting, there's a lot to be said for having something that big to call your own. Something you can create your own lasting memories in.
rwhitman 10y ago
The history of America is a series of migrations from rural/suburban to city centers and back again. Businesses and good jobs start to concentrate in urban downtowns, then the city gets too dense or polluted or expensive, people migrate for a better life to raise kids in a commutable distance based on the tech available (street cars, railways, cars), they go too far for the kids to find a job nearby when they are of working age, and then the kids move back to the city.. and the cycle restarts anew.

158 points by lr 10y ago

toodlebunions 10y ago

Eventually they will settle down and move to the burbs.

jonknee 10y ago
Will they? Baby boomers are moving into cities too.
- jdmichal 10y ago
  ... Because their kids are grown and moved out. So they no longer need the space suburbs provide and can move closer to the employment and entertainment available in the city.
shostack 10y ago
Not in the Bay Area they won't unless you mean maybe East Bay. The Peninsula is quite often more expensive for housing. And you need to drive everywhere.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

forkandwait 10y ago

In this debate, we should look to cities in other countries. As I understand it, Paris/ Vancouver/ London/ Tokyo etc have never been subject to the "rule" that young couples move to the suburbs once they are ready to raise families. Nor are they subject to the rule that cities are dangerous and have bad schools. If we can fix schools and crime, like other civilized nations, then there is no reason to believe people will move out of cities once they reach a certain age.

iojdnfjg 10y ago
> In this debate, we should look to cities in other countries. As I understand it, Paris/ Vancouver/ London/ Tokyo etc have never been subject to the "rule" that young couples move to the suburbs once they are ready to raise families. A small family home in Vancouver proper will run you 750k+. The median individual income is $27,600 in Canada. When you do the math you realize 95% of the population simply can't afford to live in big cities unless they rent, which makes it harder to buy a home in the future.
pc86 10y ago
You say "fix schools and crime" like it is known empirically what to do. It is not as simple as pumping money into the districts. France, Canada, England, Japan and other "civilized nations" debate how best to fund schools and fight crime just like the US.
- simonsarris 10y ago
  To add credence to your point, this headline from last week: "Obama administration spent billions to fix failing schools, and it didn’t work" https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/obama-administration-spent-billions-to-fix-failing-schools-and-it-didnt-work/2017/01/19/6d24ac1a-de6d-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/obama-adminis...
  - mastax 10y ago
    And here's an alternative solution: re-integration https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/...
    - yareally 10y ago
      Moving students around schools in an attempt to equalize race and poverty levels isn't a new concept and it's been tried before (and possibly still done in some states/cities). They tried forced busing of students to schools across the cities in Ohio back in the 70s and 80s to equalize school demographics. Parents moved in droves to the suburbs and Ohio cities only started recovering in the past 10 years after the program was ended in the 90s. No one wanted their children to go to a school 40 minutes away when there was a perfectly good one within walking distance. If one still thinks this is a viable solution, how is it going to going to avoid the mistakes of previous attempts? Last thing the cities here need is a mass migration back to the suburbs when the cities have just started turning around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_City_Schools#1977_Desegregation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_City_Schools#1977_Des... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing

pizzetta 10y ago

Living with roommates and living in small quarters as well as spending half of your money on housing is okay when you are single and having fun exploring your self and your potential and direction --but once people have children equations change and living in the city becomes less possible --mostly because of the lack of "family-centric" housing stock --whether detached units or multi-bedroom condos and apartment units along with city amenities for kids as well as good school systems. In SF, for example, bad school districts is a very big reason for people to leave for better districts --some parents of means will remain but put their kids in private schools, obviously that does not scale.

msrpotus 10y ago
There's no rule that says that rich cities will continue to have bad schools. To take one counter example, there are plenty of well-off parents in NYC who send their kids to public schools because New York has built a number of public schools that are good (not enough, to be fair, but enough that there are plenty of families here). The same could happen in San Francisco.
- scurvy 10y ago
  One problem is that SF doesn't have a gifted and talented program until near high school (and the junior highs are terrible across the board). Even with more schools, the school board would mismanage them. It's easier just to move than it is to fight an entrenched bureaucracy.
- pizzetta 10y ago
  Of course, but given that in the SF example, at least, the proportion of the pop under 18yoa is very low, so that more or less will result in fewer resources dedicated to education. If the proportion under 18yoa of people were increasing we'd see an investment for the future --but given the characteristics of housing stock in SF, we're not likely to see the proportion of under 18yoa increase significantly in the near future.
  - scurvy 10y ago

pbnjay 10y ago

I live/work near two small towns with efforts to "revitalize" their small downtowns. They're doing a lot of the right things to attract young professionals, but both of them are investing in small 1-, maybe 2-bedroom apartments and not apartments large enough for families. If the numbers are similar even for larger cities then I'm not surprised why people move out to the burbs - a 1 bedroom apartment gets very cramped with kids - especially when you don't live somewhere like NYC/SF with enough parks/amenities around.

fovc 10y ago

Why is it that suburban living is so much cheaper? It's never been clear to me why that should be the case (from first principles). With the greater density (3x according to [1]), you'd expect lower utilities, transportation, etc. costs. "Shelter" (i.e., housing minus utilities, furniture, etc.) is typically only a bit more than transportation as a category of spend, and about 1/5 of total annual expenditures.[2] I've read claims that suburban property taxes are artificially low (mainly on articles on HN, but can't seem to find any right now) and obviously funding highways and commuter rail out of general taxes subsidizes sprawl. I wonder how this cost comparison would look from a balance of system perspective as is, and then what a higher land tax would do. Has anyone seen or done anything like this? [1] http://www.demographia.com/db-intlsub.htm http://www.demographia.com/db-intlsub.htm [2] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm

pswenson 10y ago
property value is much higher in cities than burbs due to supply/demand
neonnoodle 10y ago
Maybe you should add "supply and demand" to your list of first principles.
- fovc 10y ago
  Well, sure, but supply of what and demand of what? Housing? Like I said, that's only about 20% of the average American's spending. But why does demand outpace supply so much in cities? Is it that building apartments and condos is so much more expensive than building suburban homes? And if so, by how much (seeing as it's only 20% of the total)
  - ghaff 10y ago
    >But why does demand outpace supply so much in cities? Some cities. (And, more specifically, some parts of some cities.) I'm sure it's not hard to find inexpensive housing in many areas of Detroit, to give one example. It really boils down to demand and land value, which is a particular problem in cities that can't just spread out further.

Decade 10y ago

As usual, the NY Times sees an actual phenomenon, but fails to understand it. Softening rents? That’s because you have a limited resource of people willing and able to pay $3000 to $5000 for a single bedroom apartment. It doesn’t take much construction to saturate that market. The problem there is that housing is so insanely difficult to build in a place like New York or San Francisco. There are far more people who can pay $1000 for 1 bedroom, or $3000 for 4 bedrooms (roommates, typically), and it would be insane to ignore that market. But abusive zoning laws and the capricious permit process ensure that that price of housing would be unprofitable. So the big developers and financiers wait until the market goes to insanity levels before making a little boom of construction. We need to reform housing, allowing increased density and by-right permit approvals, and then the little guy has a chance to build affordable housing.

kevinstubbs 10y ago
Is there any merit to the argument that increasing population density will make bad traffic exponentially worse?
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  I can't imagine there wouldn't be, which is why a sane transit policy is also required. It's a slightly over-simplified but fairly-explanatory model to say that every mile traveled in a car is a failure of transit policy.
- erispoe 10y ago
  No. Because increased density goes with less reliance on individual cars. The majority of people (by far) in NY or SF don't have a car already. Traffic is not bad in the densest cities of the western world, because we have much more efficient ways of moving people around: public transit. But you also need density to sustain public transit. So you have sour spot where there's not enough density to have good public transit, but enough to create bad traffic. Edit: see below, it's actually the majority of new households that don't have a car in many large American cities, except for NYC, in majority car-free.

AstralStorm 10y ago

Why say millennial when you mean yuppie?

edblarney 10y ago

Millenials are not very young anymore :)

amyjess 10y ago
Millennials were born 1982-2004. The youngest Millennials are still in junior high. Generations are always ~20 years or so. Gen X was 1961-1981, Boomers were 1943-1960, Silents were 1925-1942, GIs were 1901-1924, etc.
- jarboot 10y ago
  > Millennials were born 1982-2004 What source are you getting this from? Looking at wikipedia, a lot of them put the beginning of Gen Z at ~1995-98. As someone fitting into this bracket (I don't remember 9/11), I'd say it's accurate to loosely define the cutoff for Millennials as somebody who remembered 9/11, was in the labor force during the great recession, or was socially active during Web 1.0. Gen Z doesn't remember life without the internet, grew up on Facebook/Instagram (vs. primarily chatrooms, forums, etc.), and didn't have as much experience with desktop computers for leisure in leu of phones. This is just my observation as someone who has seen and is currently engaging with a spectrum of youth in the school system. Thoughts?
  - amyjess 10y ago
    It comes from Strauss-Howe Generational Theory. Strauss and Howe coined the term "Millennial", so I'll take them at their word for the size of the cohort. Here's a table from Neil Howe's website: http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/timelines/generations.html http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/timelines/generations... And a Wikipedia article with an overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio... Source for Strauss and Howe coining "Millennial": http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/advertising/story/2012-05-03/naming-the-next-generation/54737518/1 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/advertising/story/2012-... > "No one knows who will name the next generation," says Neil Howe, who, along with his deceased co-author and business partner, William Strauss, is widely credited with naming the Millennials, a generation he figures spans from about 1982 to 2004.

jartelt 10y ago

Several of my friends are considering moving from SF and other popular places on the peninsula to Half Moon Bay (or somewhere like it). When rent for your 2 bedroom apartment goes over $3,000, you notice that you are basically paying the equivalent of the monthly mortgage payment on a $750,000 house. Then, you realize you may be having kids in a few years and will probably want a small yard and no shared walls. Of course, you then must start saving like mad so you can get the ~$100k needed for the down payment on your $800k fixer upper.

sjg007 10y ago
Half Moon Bay is not that much cheaper...
- jartelt 10y ago
  True, it's not THAT much cheaper, but it's a place where can actually find a 3 bedroom / 2 bathroom standalone home for <$1M in the bay area that is within 45 minutes of most jobs. When you can only afford a $800k mortgage, your options are severely limited.
juliangoldsmith 10y ago
>When rent for your 2 bedroom apartment goes over $3,000, you notice that you are basically paying the equivalent of the monthly mortgage payment on a $750,000 house. Jesus Christ. It would be very difficult to even spend that much money on a house or apartment near where I live, outside Charlotte, NC.
spaceflunky 10y ago
Half Moon Bay seems like a good idea, until everyone starts having the same "good idea" as you and then the tiny back country roads coming into and out of Half Moon Bay turn a 45min commute into a 1h30min commute and you're back at square one. These 'clever hacks' are not sustainable solutions to the bigger problem at hand.

rconti 10y ago

>Here’s one thing we know: People get older. Another is that people’s tolerance for entry-level jobs and small urban apartments is highest when they are young adults. I'm not clear on why they think entry level jobs result in city living. If anything, the cost of living makes it seem like it would be the opposite.

AllanWrench 10y ago

Big cities are going to die. For decades, they voted themselves nonexistent money to prop up corrupt politicians, greedy unions, and provide corporate welfare. Now it's coming home to roost and the rest of us don't care. One big datapoint here is the most recent election: Trump won several thousand counties to Clinton's several hundred. This was mimiced up- and down the ballot and was almost perfectly divided as a cities vs. everyone else thing. You cannot escape economic reality no matter what the vote buyers think.

tossraccount333 10y ago
Counties are of varying density. Winning a lot of them is in no way indicative of how many voters were on a candidates side. It's already well discussed that Trump did well in rural counties. I don't know what you're trying to argue? Trump lost the popular vote by ~3 million. With the electoral college, winning counties and the popular vote don't matter. As a city dweller, I could sit back and say rural areas are going to die too. They're shrinking, mostly over 50, and the rest of us don't care that they failed to adapt to the changing world and instead dug their heels in, expecting everyone else to build the world in their vision. I grew up in Trumplandia; this was the rhetoric there, from the trailer trash to the local leaders. The world should just leave us alone, we don't care. Except they would start caring if all those urban ports started cutting them off from goods. Which is just pointless rhetoric, lacking empathy. Let's draw deeper, longer lines in the sand. Let's continue instigating division between populations. Yeah OK, that'll lead to more positive outcomes for either side.
mratzloff 10y ago
There are more people in the urban counties than the sparsely-populated rural counties. Cities are growing and are expected to continue growing. Meanwhile, rural areas are dying.[0] What reality do you think people are trying to escape? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depopulation_of_the_Great_Plains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depopulation_of_the_Great_Plai...
- drak0n1c 10y ago
  A few decades from now I can see the trend reversing. If automation makes living in small to medium sized towns in the country more convenient, lots of people who currently flock to cities out of economic necessity will prefer a less crowded life.

amyjess 10y ago

My cousin (born in 1980; just barely on the Gen-X side of the line between Xers and Millennials) lives in Manhattan and has two kids. She told me not too long ago that she's planning on moving out to the suburbs pretty soon because they just don't have enough room. Their apartment is one of the smallest two-bedrooms I've seen, and it took some creative work to stick two cribs in the kids' room. I doubt they'll still be living in the city by the end of this year.

Arizhel 10y ago
The ceilings are at least 8 feet high, right? The solution is simple: stacked cribs! You have to think vertically in NYC.

CodeSheikh 10y ago

A whole article on an actual phenomenon. Allow me to explain in plain English. People born in 1981-1999 are getting older and moving out of cities. Thus reversing a trend that was never meant to be ever-increasing.

spaceflunky 10y ago

On the surface, I agree with the author's reasoning that eventually many millennials will "grow-up" and want suburban homes for their kids with better schools. And this makes sense because it would follow trends in the past. However the author is missing a couple key components that lead me to believe the future will not be like the past. For example... 1.) In the past there were suburbs to move to. For example, in the 80s and 90s, Contra Costa (Walnut Creek, Danville, etc) were being developed as a viable suburb to SF. However, as far as I know there are no new suburbs being developed that provide a reasonable commute time or distance from SF. 2.) Of the suburbs that exists, those that are a reasonable commute time from major hubs are still pretty expensive. Again Walnut Creek maintains its value quite well. So it's not really a "cheaper option" from the city. 3.) Baby Boomers are living longer and staying in their suburb homes longer, which doesn't give an opportunity for millennials looking to start a family to move in. I've long since thought that instead of building new suburbs, we should be looking for options to move empty-nesters from their 4-bedroom homes that they don't need anymore. All of my friends parents still live in their suburban homes because they have no other options for the most part. 4.) Author assumes all millennials are waiting to have kids. (They're not.) 5.) We have plain old population growth to rely on. Cities collapsed in the past because there were places for people to go and a relatively smaller population. I strongly feel that we've exhausted a lot of those options while our population continues to grow strongly (at least in the US). Therefore, cities will remain full simply because of lack of other options and population growth (both by birth and immigration).

dcchambers 10y ago

I find it interesting that people in this thread are quick to point out that you might not save much money when you move to the suburbs because of transit and extra time costs. I think people are failing to realize a large people do (and I plan to soon) move to the 'burbs is because they can OWN a house. Even if owning won't save money over renting, there's a lot to be said for having something that big to call your own. Something you can create your own lasting memories in.

rwhitman 10y ago

The history of America is a series of migrations from rural/suburban to city centers and back again. Businesses and good jobs start to concentrate in urban downtowns, then the city gets too dense or polluted or expensive, people migrate for a better life to raise kids in a commutable distance based on the tech available (street cars, railways, cars), they go too far for the kids to find a job nearby when they are of working age, and then the kids move back to the city.. and the cycle restarts anew.