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Kevin Drum's rebuttal, citing census data and Brookings estimates: "there never really was much of a back-to-the-city trend in the first place... With only tin

Kevin Drum's rebuttal, citing census data and Brookings estimates: "there never really was much of a back-to-the-city trend in the first place... With only tiny variances, the suburbs have been gaining population for 70 years relative to cities (and rural areas)..." Millenials' preferences appear roughly similar to the preferences of other generations. It's almost as if millenials don't love avocado toast so much as they love defying sweeping stereotypes about cohorts divided by arbitrary birth years. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/07/millennials-love-the-burbs/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/07/millennials-l... .

0xB31B1B 7y ago
Population doesn’t tell the story WRT lifestyle preferences, vacancy rates and prices do, and both indicate that millennials prefer urban living.
- ericd 7y ago
  People generally seem to prefer cities when they're single and/or childless. Maybe millenials are just taking a bit longer to leave that phase than previous generations?
  - mymythisisthis 7y ago
    The split I see. Progressive parents are staying in the city and fighting. They're Hipsters, and they are organizing; community events, volunteering in schools, etc. The ones that are moving to the suburbs are the ones that are bit traditional, not into fighting for social causes.
flukus 7y ago
That article might be dated considering it's only got an estimate for 2010 and I don't see a published date. And that vertical axis seems to be representing different things, or is the remainder rural? Anecdotally I see more families in inner city Melbourne than there was a decade ago, but I also see things like kids sporting events becoming local affairs when they used to involve driving kids around the city a lot more, so some areas are definitely adapting to more inner city parents with no cars.
- casefields 7y ago
  Off topic but news articles that don't show dates or make it difficult to find, are really starting to get on my nerves.
mymythisisthis 7y ago
What's not talked about so much is the ghettoization of the suburbs. If you look closely, many of the houses are rooming houses. It's harder to tell because 4 or 5 cars parked in the driveway is not abnormal in the burbs. The suburbs built in the 1930s are being gentrified, and are now considered 'downtown'. The suburbs built in the 1940s-1960s are in now the edge of the city, inhabited by an older generation or retires that vote very conservatively as they try to stop change in their neighborhoods. The suburbs built in the 1970s and 1980s are starting to show their age. They are at the ends of public transit lines where rents in rooming houses are the cheapest. This is the area new immigrants are moving, as it saves money, but the commute is long. The suburbs of the 1990s till now are eating up small towns. This causes some tension between the new burbs and the more redneck locals that have never liked the city.
- closeparen 7y ago
  There's a widespread NIMBY view that small apartments are part of a "race to the bottom," and by enforcing a high minimum standard for living space, we can make all families better off. But of course, if you're in the market for a small apartment, you're not getting a large-lot single family home to yourself. You're getting a roommate situation in one. Five commuting adults in a house is arguably a worse strain on infrastructure than a small apartment building would have been.
closeparen 7y ago
>Millenials' preferences appear roughly similar to the preferences of other generations. Or the hard-fought activist campaigns by city residents to keep their populations from growing have been successful.

0xB31B1B 7y ago

Population doesn’t tell the story WRT lifestyle preferences, vacancy rates and prices do, and both indicate that millennials prefer urban living.

ericd 7y ago
People generally seem to prefer cities when they're single and/or childless. Maybe millenials are just taking a bit longer to leave that phase than previous generations?
- mymythisisthis 7y ago
  The split I see. Progressive parents are staying in the city and fighting. They're Hipsters, and they are organizing; community events, volunteering in schools, etc. The ones that are moving to the suburbs are the ones that are bit traditional, not into fighting for social causes.

flukus 7y ago

That article might be dated considering it's only got an estimate for 2010 and I don't see a published date. And that vertical axis seems to be representing different things, or is the remainder rural? Anecdotally I see more families in inner city Melbourne than there was a decade ago, but I also see things like kids sporting events becoming local affairs when they used to involve driving kids around the city a lot more, so some areas are definitely adapting to more inner city parents with no cars.

casefields 7y ago
Off topic but news articles that don't show dates or make it difficult to find, are really starting to get on my nerves.

mymythisisthis 7y ago

What's not talked about so much is the ghettoization of the suburbs. If you look closely, many of the houses are rooming houses. It's harder to tell because 4 or 5 cars parked in the driveway is not abnormal in the burbs. The suburbs built in the 1930s are being gentrified, and are now considered 'downtown'. The suburbs built in the 1940s-1960s are in now the edge of the city, inhabited by an older generation or retires that vote very conservatively as they try to stop change in their neighborhoods. The suburbs built in the 1970s and 1980s are starting to show their age. They are at the ends of public transit lines where rents in rooming houses are the cheapest. This is the area new immigrants are moving, as it saves money, but the commute is long. The suburbs of the 1990s till now are eating up small towns. This causes some tension between the new burbs and the more redneck locals that have never liked the city.

closeparen 7y ago
There's a widespread NIMBY view that small apartments are part of a "race to the bottom," and by enforcing a high minimum standard for living space, we can make all families better off. But of course, if you're in the market for a small apartment, you're not getting a large-lot single family home to yourself. You're getting a roommate situation in one. Five commuting adults in a house is arguably a worse strain on infrastructure than a small apartment building would have been.

closeparen 7y ago

>Millenials' preferences appear roughly similar to the preferences of other generations. Or the hard-fought activist campaigns by city residents to keep their populations from growing have been successful.