8 ms·

Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

109 points by trevin 15y ago

ekianjo 15y ago
The article missed the economic point, I think. If we live through another major economy crash (that cannot be ruled out, seeing the huge public deficits everywhere) this means high paying jobs in big cities will be harder to find, and therefore the cost of living in large cities will be unsustainable for many. If this happens, moving to the suburbs in order to have decent standards of living is very likely as well. It's very difficult to make predictions on such trends, however, and the article's points rely on a great number of undisclosed assumptions on the future.
rayiner 15y ago
Article describes me to a T. Grew up in the suburbs of DC, and after having moved to progressively bigger cities over the last 10 years (Atlanta, Chicago, and soon New York), I can't imagine ever again living in a place where finding you're out of contact lens solution involves a 45 minute car trip to the nearest CVS.
- ryanhuff 15y ago
  Having lived in suburban communities all of my life, I have never lived further than 10 minutes away from a CVS type of store. Perhaps your experience is more rural than suburban?
  - thejteam 15y ago
    I'm pretty familiar with the DC suburbs and between normal daytime traffic(not even considering morning or afternoon rush hour), traffic lights, and the time to get to a main road from you community(very slow speed limits) a half hour wouldn't surprise me at all and 45 minutes is very possible.
    - Locke1689 15y ago
      Baltimore suburb, but same experience. Probably more like 20-30 minutes, though.
    - ryanhuff 15y ago
      I am in southern California, and perhaps the suburbs here are more concentrated than suburbs elsewhere. I have three pharmacies, three grocery stores, and a Walmart all within 10 minutes. It does require taking a car, though.
      - rayiner 15y ago
        45 minutes round-trip: 20 minutes there, 20 minutes back, 5 minutes at the store. With only moderate traffic, of course, rush hour (which in the DC suburbs extends from noon to 9 pm) can easily extend this to an hour. Compare to Chicago where running out of contact solution means taking the elevator down 28 floors to the 7-11 in my building. And I don't know about So-Cal, but Nor-Cal "suburbs" are far denser than in DC. People call Silicon Valley a bunch of suburbs, but as far as I can tell its a series of small urban centers connected by a highway.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 15y ago
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saryant 15y ago
I absolutely fall into this category. Grew up in suburbs of LA, San Francisco, Houston and the outskirts of Cheyenne, WY. Now I'm about to move into the Montrose area of Houston. I hate driving and now I'll be taking metro rail to downtown and I'll be close to great restaurants, grocery stores and cafes. Even if I do need to drive, I'll be smack in the middle of what I consider the "good" parts of Houston so I won't have far to go nor will I need to bother with highways too often. Okay, so Houston isn't a paradise of car-independence but I think the Montrose, Washington Heights and Rice Village areas of Houston definitely fit this article well.
- rollypolly 15y ago
  I dream of a post-car America. But wouldn't that require places like Houston to build massive amounts of public transport?
  - saryant 15y ago
    Yes, of course. And I don't really expect that to happen. Right now Houston has one light rail line running from Reliant Stadium, through the med center and Rice University/Museum District into downtown. They are building several new lines right now but still aren't reaching into the suburbs. I don't expect Houston to become a post-car city in the reasonable future.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      There's occasional talk of running commuter rail on the I-45 corridor from Houston to Galveston, through Clear Lake and other SE suburbs, on the existing (little-used) freight line. If Los Angeles can do it with Metrolink (which similarly runs on existing track), Houston should be able to do it, but I'm not holding my breath. I believe there's substantial demand; the park-n-ride lots for the downtown express buses from Clear Lake have been completely overflowing for the past few years, as driving on I-45 has gotten less appealing with the ever-increasing traffic. I do see more construction nearer to the center, at least. There are condos and townhomes in the Medical Center area that were abandoned and/or slums 10 years ago.
learc83 15y ago
There's plenty of truth in that article, but I can't help but think that this trend is almost purely a product of demographic changes. People wait longer to get married and have children, so there way more 25-30 year olds who worry more about living within walking distance to a bar and less about a backyard and a nice school. Many of the urban Gen Y the article talks about will move back to the suburbs when they have children. A 1-2 bedroom apartment is fine for 2 people, but apartment living gets rather cramped when you have 4 or 5 people living there. Atlanta Public schools are pretty horrible, I can't imagine many of my friends who currently live in the city staying there when they have kids who are school age. Additionally the rise of the self driving car is going to completely torpedo 90% of the advantages of living in a city.
- EricDeb 15y ago
  I agree. As an "underdeveloped" (ie no impending plans to escape to the suburbs with a newly betrothed spouse) 22 year old I have no desire to be in the suburbs because they seem boring and lack the nightlife and women that currently interest me.
- toyg 15y ago
  The self-driving car will still need energy to run. Suburbs are built on the principle that energy is cheap. That is no longer the case.
  - TheFuture 15y ago
    The self driving car will be much more energy efficient, especially if they can communicate with each other to optimize traffic flow
    - sliverstorm 15y ago
      Improving traffic flow is a win, but only a small win. Lugging around the mass of the car and yourself is still by far and away the biggest energy cost of operating a car, not sitting at a stoplight or getting stuck in stop-and-go. Clearing up 1 mile of stop-and-go is not going to make up for the 9 miles from your house to the city streets on your 10-mile commute.
scarmig 15y ago
I'm sympathetic to the viewpoint that it's important to watch cities as central to our future. This article, however, relies a bit much on psychological gobbledygook. Helicopter parents, Friends, the Google bus... Even the one graph they provide is more or less incomprehensible. What would be useful to see is land prices in inner urban areas, average lived population density, and comparative migration patterns for young adult populations (ideally taking into account long term lifestyle pattern trends). My general take: Places like NYC, SF, and Chicago are definitely growing, but not at some particularly spectacular rate; IIRC it's at pace with US population growth as a whole. Instead the areas with the highest population growth have been the sun belt for the past decade, which is hardly the "smart" urban growth that people go nuts over. The demographics, however, are changing in a much more meaningful way. Gentrification will continue and accelerate. Not everyone will live in the city: instead it will be a professional ruling class working in government, finance, law, technology, and business (and their associated servants), with everyone else relegated to the decaying suburbs. So if you want to see the future, look at Paris.
- wtn 15y ago
  Chicago shrank by 6.9% from 2000-2010.
  - emperorcezar 15y ago
    Chicago mostly lost population in black neighborhoods. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/us/16illinois.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/us/16illinois.html
  - scarmig 15y ago
    That's... very weird and surprising. NYC grew by low single digits, while SF did a bit more. I incorrectly assumed this was shared across most major cities. I'm not sure how that affects my prediction, one way or another. Edited to add: a table with actual data. The 2000s have not been kind to most cities. By comparison, the USA as a whole grew 9.7% from 2000 to 2010. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-04-07-1Acities07_ST_N.htm#table http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-04-07-1Aciti...
nostromo 15y ago
I'm noticing this play out on the ground in Seattle. There's a big box Target opening up right downtown. It used to be that if you wanted anything from Target, WalMart, BestBuy, etc., you had to go on an adventure to the suburbs. I've noticed other retailers are making moves to smaller stores located in city centers (like BestBuy recently announced http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/04/best-buy-releases-store-locations-closure-list/ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/04/best-buy-releas...). Also, Amazon is surprisingly still located downtown(ish). Most companies its size prefer to locate somewhere suburban on a sprawling corporate campus. It could be a competitive advantage; I know a number of young people who would stay away from Microsoft because of the dreaded commute to Redmond.
- billpaetzke 15y ago
  Los Angeles is also getting a Target downtown this year, just a few blocks from the Staples Center (where LA Lakers play). The city gov is trying to make the downtown more livable, but it still needs more commercial presence; there's a bit too much housing and not enough places to buy what you need. And public transit could be better obviously.
- ntkachov 15y ago
  Knowing Microsoft and a few people that work there, if there was a large enough group of people in the city they would send out a private shuttle to and from the city every day.
  - Nate75Sanders 15y ago
    been going on for a while The Connector: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/misc/09-06connectorFS.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/misc/09-06connectorFS.as...
- vinayan3 15y ago
  In SF is going to get a Target in the downtown shopping area. Same story as Seattle going to Target meant going to a sub-urban area.
- 15y ago
davidf18 15y ago
I live in Manhattan and for me and my friends not only do we not like wasting time in cars but we like stores/restaurants, etc. open 24 hours. We have 5 Apple stores in Manhattan including one store open 24/7/365. So...have a city that is alive late into the night is also important to the lifestyle...
fusiongyro 15y ago
The book "Generations: the History of America's Future" accurately predicts a lot of the content of this article, and was written in 1991.
rgrieselhuber 15y ago
Wait until they have kids.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
darksaga 15y ago
I've actually found most of the growth is in rural communities, not large urban areas. In the 2010 census, you saw low increases, or even decreases in these areas, while more rural areas gained large numbers. For instance, Cook County in Illinois (where Chicago is located) saw a 3% drop in its population from 2000-2010. By contrast, Cass County in North Dakota (where Fargo is located) saw a 21% population increase from 2000-2010. (source was 2010 census - http://www.usatoday.com/news/census/index?refresh=1 http://www.usatoday.com/news/census/index?refresh=1)
- oijaf888 15y ago
  Isn't the latter due to the oil boom? I'm sure if you looked at growth in the San Jose area from 1990 to 2000 it would be a similar increase.
- datasage 15y ago
  In places like ND, you can have a few people move in and see large gains in relative population. Now, there are parts of ND that are growing, which is largely attributed to oil sands exploration. Which is attracting blue collar workers from some of the declining cities.
lcargill99 15y ago
I have two Gen Y daughters. My general impression is that Gen Y is not analyze-eable as the Baby Boom was. I attribute this to the end of monoculture, but that's probably a bias. I have no idea why anybody who is not in finance would care to live in NYC. That's a late-boomer bias, probably caused by watching Barney Miller.
- oijaf888 15y ago
  NYC has so much more than finance, in fact unless you seek out finance types its pretty easy to be isolated from them totally, plus they tend to blend into the Jersey Shore type crowd in many places. Plus there is so much more to NYC than just Manhattan.
- msutherl 15y ago
  Freedom to be who you want to be and (1) be respected for it and (2) find similar friends. In other words, higher probability of finding fellow outliers.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
BobertK 15y ago
Not to mention: Most older Americans are broke. An apt in the city (think re-populated smaller, older cities, and large towns) is cheaper to heat and cool, convenient; so then a car and it's attendant expense is unnecessary. If I am old and divorced i'd rather have neighbors across the hall than a house to maintain, even if I can afford it.
- orangecat 15y ago
  Most older Americans are broke. Source? By the last numbers I've seen, net wealth increases directly with age.
  - BobertK 15y ago
    This is before the housing crisis -it is much worse now What you see above and below is where the US stood in 2007. Again because this data is as close to 100% accurate as you can get. Avg Net Worth Bottom 25%: $4,600 Avg Net Worth Next 25 – 50%: $21,700 Avg Net Worth Next 50 – 75%: $78,900 Avg Net Worth Next 75 – 90%: $242,800 Avg Net Worth Top 10%: $1,606,600
- orangecat 15y ago
  Most older Americans are broke. Source? By the last numbers I've seen, net wealth increases directly with age.
twelvechairs 15y ago
This trend (moving back into city centres) has been around for a long time, and is well documented. The USA is slower than most of Europe on this (although they generally did not desert the city centre quite so much). Its worth also noting that a lot of this is down to government and planning laws, which in the 1950s (generally when they were introduced on a wide scale) hugely subsidised suburban development and road building, to the expense of existing urban areas (which were largely unfunded). 60 years of cumulative common sense has led to a re-emergence of city centres as nice places to live (and cost-effective for governments) rather than the 'slums' of the early century.
- philwelch 15y ago
  In the US, the migration to the suburbs was also motivated by racism. Europe, at the time, didn't have the same conflicts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight Another part of the governmental subsidy problem is that governments by design tend to redistribute wealth out of cities and into rural and suburban areas. It even happens at multiple scales; Seattle pays taxes to the Washington State government which are then redistributed to outlying towns, but Washington pays taxes to the US federal government which are then redistributed to Wyoming and Alaska. Until governments are redesigned along the principle that human beings, and not parcels of land, are the true stakeholders, this will be a systemic problem.
JVIDEL 15y ago
Funny, nowhere in the article I see a mention of the widening income gap (more like a canyon these days) that means most of YGens wont be able to afford the same "luxuries" than their parents had. In fact most will struggle to keep their place in the socio-economic scale, some will go down from middle class, and it's not "the future", it's already happening. But I guess is far more "positive" to say YGens just "don't like suburbs anymore" rather than admitting that if suburbs were indeed still cool most wouldn't be able to afford a house there anyway. Let's be honest, even many boomers and XGens had to get into massive debt to buy a house in those places, and some are living under a tarp now. Not talking about the problem doesn't make it go away...
sliverstorm 15y ago
We're 12% of the way into the 21st Century. Can we really use names like "The Great Migration of the 21st Century" yet?
michaelochurch 15y ago
Here's the major change. Jobs don't last 5+ years on a regular basis anymore. It's very hard to have a real career without moving around, because people are either "tapped" for the best projects in the first 6-12 months in a new job, or they're not. The "not" case means that it's time to move on. You have to move around a lot (a lot more than most people are comfortable with) to have a real career. What this means is that living outside of a major city is just untenable, because changing jobs means changing cities, and no one wants to do that every few years. If you loe uour job or just need to change, and you live in New York, you're OK. If you live in Dayton, Ohio, though, you're somewhat out of luck. The appeal of the star cities is skyrocketing because of this change: because the rest of the cities just don't have large enough job markets, considering how specialized most modern work is and how frequent job changes are becoming.
- canadiancreed 15y ago
  I completely agree with you, and this article says exactly what friends of mine have been telling me for years. Unlike most folks that fit into the Gen X/Y mold, I cant' stand living in cities, perfer living in the country, yet also enjoy being in the IT industry which makes things difficult at best. And after living in the suburbs (Kanata, ON), small towns (Perth ON, Belleville ON, and now Charlottetown, PEI) for over a decade and change, to paraphrase the Game of Thrones, "You move to the city, or you starve". Small towns not only have a small market for prospective job hunters, but if you lose a job for whatever reason, your'e hosed. Yet if the company you are working for in Toronto downsizes you, you can have five interviews the next day. It's really no contest, and unfortunately for myself, it's the way it's going to be for decades to come. Moving to anywhere outside of the larger cities will hurt in the long run.
egypturnash 15y ago
I must be ahead the curve, or refusing to "grow up". I was born in 1971 which may or may not qualify me for "Gen X" and living in a revitalized urban area is the best thing ever to me. Of course I have also never learnt to drive despite now being 40. I can NOT thrive in a suburb. It also helps that I found a damn nice area to live. But honestly I think this owes as much to deliberate urban planning efforts in the 80s/90s to "revitalize downtown" as it does to anything GenY wants. It is now easy and fun to live in the city again, instead of it being a desperate scary place; all the poor people now largely live way the fuck out in the burbs and have nightmare commutes to their shitty city jobs.
Apocryphon 15y ago
How does this correlate with West Coast startup culture? Is San Francisco really replacing Silicon Valley in terms where the companies, and so where the people, are going?

109 points by trevin 15y ago

The article missed the economic point, I think. If we live through another major economy crash (that cannot be ruled out, seeing the huge public deficits everywhere) this means high paying jobs in big cities will be harder to find, and therefore the cost of living in large cities will be unsustainable for many. If this happens, moving to the suburbs in order to have decent standards of living is very likely as well. It's very difficult to make predictions on such trends, however, and the article's points rely on a great number of undisclosed assumptions on the future.

rayiner 15y ago

Article describes me to a T. Grew up in the suburbs of DC, and after having moved to progressively bigger cities over the last 10 years (Atlanta, Chicago, and soon New York), I can't imagine ever again living in a place where finding you're out of contact lens solution involves a 45 minute car trip to the nearest CVS.

ryanhuff 15y ago
Having lived in suburban communities all of my life, I have never lived further than 10 minutes away from a CVS type of store. Perhaps your experience is more rural than suburban?
- thejteam 15y ago
  I'm pretty familiar with the DC suburbs and between normal daytime traffic(not even considering morning or afternoon rush hour), traffic lights, and the time to get to a main road from you community(very slow speed limits) a half hour wouldn't surprise me at all and 45 minutes is very possible.
  - Locke1689 15y ago
    Baltimore suburb, but same experience. Probably more like 20-30 minutes, though.
  - ryanhuff 15y ago
    I am in southern California, and perhaps the suburbs here are more concentrated than suburbs elsewhere. I have three pharmacies, three grocery stores, and a Walmart all within 10 minutes. It does require taking a car, though.
    - rayiner 15y ago
      45 minutes round-trip: 20 minutes there, 20 minutes back, 5 minutes at the store. With only moderate traffic, of course, rush hour (which in the DC suburbs extends from noon to 9 pm) can easily extend this to an hour. Compare to Chicago where running out of contact solution means taking the elevator down 28 floors to the 7-11 in my building. And I don't know about So-Cal, but Nor-Cal "suburbs" are far denser than in DC. People call Silicon Valley a bunch of suburbs, but as far as I can tell its a series of small urban centers connected by a highway.
- deleted 15y ago
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deleted 15y ago

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saryant 15y ago

I absolutely fall into this category. Grew up in suburbs of LA, San Francisco, Houston and the outskirts of Cheyenne, WY. Now I'm about to move into the Montrose area of Houston. I hate driving and now I'll be taking metro rail to downtown and I'll be close to great restaurants, grocery stores and cafes. Even if I do need to drive, I'll be smack in the middle of what I consider the "good" parts of Houston so I won't have far to go nor will I need to bother with highways too often. Okay, so Houston isn't a paradise of car-independence but I think the Montrose, Washington Heights and Rice Village areas of Houston definitely fit this article well.

rollypolly 15y ago
I dream of a post-car America. But wouldn't that require places like Houston to build massive amounts of public transport?
- saryant 15y ago
  Yes, of course. And I don't really expect that to happen. Right now Houston has one light rail line running from Reliant Stadium, through the med center and Rice University/Museum District into downtown. They are building several new lines right now but still aren't reaching into the suburbs. I don't expect Houston to become a post-car city in the reasonable future.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    There's occasional talk of running commuter rail on the I-45 corridor from Houston to Galveston, through Clear Lake and other SE suburbs, on the existing (little-used) freight line. If Los Angeles can do it with Metrolink (which similarly runs on existing track), Houston should be able to do it, but I'm not holding my breath. I believe there's substantial demand; the park-n-ride lots for the downtown express buses from Clear Lake have been completely overflowing for the past few years, as driving on I-45 has gotten less appealing with the ever-increasing traffic. I do see more construction nearer to the center, at least. There are condos and townhomes in the Medical Center area that were abandoned and/or slums 10 years ago.

learc83 15y ago

There's plenty of truth in that article, but I can't help but think that this trend is almost purely a product of demographic changes. People wait longer to get married and have children, so there way more 25-30 year olds who worry more about living within walking distance to a bar and less about a backyard and a nice school. Many of the urban Gen Y the article talks about will move back to the suburbs when they have children. A 1-2 bedroom apartment is fine for 2 people, but apartment living gets rather cramped when you have 4 or 5 people living there. Atlanta Public schools are pretty horrible, I can't imagine many of my friends who currently live in the city staying there when they have kids who are school age. Additionally the rise of the self driving car is going to completely torpedo 90% of the advantages of living in a city.

EricDeb 15y ago
I agree. As an "underdeveloped" (ie no impending plans to escape to the suburbs with a newly betrothed spouse) 22 year old I have no desire to be in the suburbs because they seem boring and lack the nightlife and women that currently interest me.
toyg 15y ago
The self-driving car will still need energy to run. Suburbs are built on the principle that energy is cheap. That is no longer the case.
- TheFuture 15y ago
  The self driving car will be much more energy efficient, especially if they can communicate with each other to optimize traffic flow
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    Improving traffic flow is a win, but only a small win. Lugging around the mass of the car and yourself is still by far and away the biggest energy cost of operating a car, not sitting at a stoplight or getting stuck in stop-and-go. Clearing up 1 mile of stop-and-go is not going to make up for the 9 miles from your house to the city streets on your 10-mile commute.

scarmig 15y ago

I'm sympathetic to the viewpoint that it's important to watch cities as central to our future. This article, however, relies a bit much on psychological gobbledygook. Helicopter parents, Friends, the Google bus... Even the one graph they provide is more or less incomprehensible. What would be useful to see is land prices in inner urban areas, average lived population density, and comparative migration patterns for young adult populations (ideally taking into account long term lifestyle pattern trends). My general take: Places like NYC, SF, and Chicago are definitely growing, but not at some particularly spectacular rate; IIRC it's at pace with US population growth as a whole. Instead the areas with the highest population growth have been the sun belt for the past decade, which is hardly the "smart" urban growth that people go nuts over. The demographics, however, are changing in a much more meaningful way. Gentrification will continue and accelerate. Not everyone will live in the city: instead it will be a professional ruling class working in government, finance, law, technology, and business (and their associated servants), with everyone else relegated to the decaying suburbs. So if you want to see the future, look at Paris.

wtn 15y ago
Chicago shrank by 6.9% from 2000-2010.
- emperorcezar 15y ago
  Chicago mostly lost population in black neighborhoods. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/us/16illinois.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/us/16illinois.html
- scarmig 15y ago
  That's... very weird and surprising. NYC grew by low single digits, while SF did a bit more. I incorrectly assumed this was shared across most major cities. I'm not sure how that affects my prediction, one way or another. Edited to add: a table with actual data. The 2000s have not been kind to most cities. By comparison, the USA as a whole grew 9.7% from 2000 to 2010. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-04-07-1Acities07_ST_N.htm#table http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-04-07-1Aciti...

nostromo 15y ago

I'm noticing this play out on the ground in Seattle. There's a big box Target opening up right downtown. It used to be that if you wanted anything from Target, WalMart, BestBuy, etc., you had to go on an adventure to the suburbs. I've noticed other retailers are making moves to smaller stores located in city centers (like BestBuy recently announced http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/04/best-buy-releases-store-locations-closure-list/ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/04/best-buy-releas...). Also, Amazon is surprisingly still located downtown(ish). Most companies its size prefer to locate somewhere suburban on a sprawling corporate campus. It could be a competitive advantage; I know a number of young people who would stay away from Microsoft because of the dreaded commute to Redmond.

billpaetzke 15y ago
Los Angeles is also getting a Target downtown this year, just a few blocks from the Staples Center (where LA Lakers play). The city gov is trying to make the downtown more livable, but it still needs more commercial presence; there's a bit too much housing and not enough places to buy what you need. And public transit could be better obviously.
ntkachov 15y ago
Knowing Microsoft and a few people that work there, if there was a large enough group of people in the city they would send out a private shuttle to and from the city every day.
- Nate75Sanders 15y ago
  been going on for a while The Connector: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/misc/09-06connectorFS.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/misc/09-06connectorFS.as...
vinayan3 15y ago
In SF is going to get a Target in the downtown shopping area. Same story as Seattle going to Target meant going to a sub-urban area.
15y ago

davidf18 15y ago

I live in Manhattan and for me and my friends not only do we not like wasting time in cars but we like stores/restaurants, etc. open 24 hours. We have 5 Apple stores in Manhattan including one store open 24/7/365. So...have a city that is alive late into the night is also important to the lifestyle...

fusiongyro 15y ago

The book "Generations: the History of America's Future" accurately predicts a lot of the content of this article, and was written in 1991.

rgrieselhuber 15y ago

Wait until they have kids.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

darksaga 15y ago

I've actually found most of the growth is in rural communities, not large urban areas. In the 2010 census, you saw low increases, or even decreases in these areas, while more rural areas gained large numbers. For instance, Cook County in Illinois (where Chicago is located) saw a 3% drop in its population from 2000-2010. By contrast, Cass County in North Dakota (where Fargo is located) saw a 21% population increase from 2000-2010. (source was 2010 census - http://www.usatoday.com/news/census/index?refresh=1 http://www.usatoday.com/news/census/index?refresh=1)

oijaf888 15y ago
Isn't the latter due to the oil boom? I'm sure if you looked at growth in the San Jose area from 1990 to 2000 it would be a similar increase.
datasage 15y ago
In places like ND, you can have a few people move in and see large gains in relative population. Now, there are parts of ND that are growing, which is largely attributed to oil sands exploration. Which is attracting blue collar workers from some of the declining cities.

lcargill99 15y ago

I have two Gen Y daughters. My general impression is that Gen Y is not analyze-eable as the Baby Boom was. I attribute this to the end of monoculture, but that's probably a bias. I have no idea why anybody who is not in finance would care to live in NYC. That's a late-boomer bias, probably caused by watching Barney Miller.

oijaf888 15y ago
NYC has so much more than finance, in fact unless you seek out finance types its pretty easy to be isolated from them totally, plus they tend to blend into the Jersey Shore type crowd in many places. Plus there is so much more to NYC than just Manhattan.
msutherl 15y ago
Freedom to be who you want to be and (1) be respected for it and (2) find similar friends. In other words, higher probability of finding fellow outliers.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

BobertK 15y ago

Not to mention: Most older Americans are broke. An apt in the city (think re-populated smaller, older cities, and large towns) is cheaper to heat and cool, convenient; so then a car and it's attendant expense is unnecessary. If I am old and divorced i'd rather have neighbors across the hall than a house to maintain, even if I can afford it.

orangecat 15y ago
Most older Americans are broke. Source? By the last numbers I've seen, net wealth increases directly with age.
- BobertK 15y ago
  This is before the housing crisis -it is much worse now What you see above and below is where the US stood in 2007. Again because this data is as close to 100% accurate as you can get. Avg Net Worth Bottom 25%: $4,600 Avg Net Worth Next 25 – 50%: $21,700 Avg Net Worth Next 50 – 75%: $78,900 Avg Net Worth Next 75 – 90%: $242,800 Avg Net Worth Top 10%: $1,606,600
orangecat 15y ago
Most older Americans are broke. Source? By the last numbers I've seen, net wealth increases directly with age.

twelvechairs 15y ago

This trend (moving back into city centres) has been around for a long time, and is well documented. The USA is slower than most of Europe on this (although they generally did not desert the city centre quite so much). Its worth also noting that a lot of this is down to government and planning laws, which in the 1950s (generally when they were introduced on a wide scale) hugely subsidised suburban development and road building, to the expense of existing urban areas (which were largely unfunded). 60 years of cumulative common sense has led to a re-emergence of city centres as nice places to live (and cost-effective for governments) rather than the 'slums' of the early century.

philwelch 15y ago
In the US, the migration to the suburbs was also motivated by racism. Europe, at the time, didn't have the same conflicts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight Another part of the governmental subsidy problem is that governments by design tend to redistribute wealth out of cities and into rural and suburban areas. It even happens at multiple scales; Seattle pays taxes to the Washington State government which are then redistributed to outlying towns, but Washington pays taxes to the US federal government which are then redistributed to Wyoming and Alaska. Until governments are redesigned along the principle that human beings, and not parcels of land, are the true stakeholders, this will be a systemic problem.

JVIDEL 15y ago

Funny, nowhere in the article I see a mention of the widening income gap (more like a canyon these days) that means most of YGens wont be able to afford the same "luxuries" than their parents had. In fact most will struggle to keep their place in the socio-economic scale, some will go down from middle class, and it's not "the future", it's already happening. But I guess is far more "positive" to say YGens just "don't like suburbs anymore" rather than admitting that if suburbs were indeed still cool most wouldn't be able to afford a house there anyway. Let's be honest, even many boomers and XGens had to get into massive debt to buy a house in those places, and some are living under a tarp now. Not talking about the problem doesn't make it go away...

sliverstorm 15y ago

We're 12% of the way into the 21st Century. Can we really use names like "The Great Migration of the 21st Century" yet?

michaelochurch 15y ago

Here's the major change. Jobs don't last 5+ years on a regular basis anymore. It's very hard to have a real career without moving around, because people are either "tapped" for the best projects in the first 6-12 months in a new job, or they're not. The "not" case means that it's time to move on. You have to move around a lot (a lot more than most people are comfortable with) to have a real career. What this means is that living outside of a major city is just untenable, because changing jobs means changing cities, and no one wants to do that every few years. If you loe uour job or just need to change, and you live in New York, you're OK. If you live in Dayton, Ohio, though, you're somewhat out of luck. The appeal of the star cities is skyrocketing because of this change: because the rest of the cities just don't have large enough job markets, considering how specialized most modern work is and how frequent job changes are becoming.

canadiancreed 15y ago
I completely agree with you, and this article says exactly what friends of mine have been telling me for years. Unlike most folks that fit into the Gen X/Y mold, I cant' stand living in cities, perfer living in the country, yet also enjoy being in the IT industry which makes things difficult at best. And after living in the suburbs (Kanata, ON), small towns (Perth ON, Belleville ON, and now Charlottetown, PEI) for over a decade and change, to paraphrase the Game of Thrones, "You move to the city, or you starve". Small towns not only have a small market for prospective job hunters, but if you lose a job for whatever reason, your'e hosed. Yet if the company you are working for in Toronto downsizes you, you can have five interviews the next day. It's really no contest, and unfortunately for myself, it's the way it's going to be for decades to come. Moving to anywhere outside of the larger cities will hurt in the long run.

egypturnash 15y ago

I must be ahead the curve, or refusing to "grow up". I was born in 1971 which may or may not qualify me for "Gen X" and living in a revitalized urban area is the best thing ever to me. Of course I have also never learnt to drive despite now being 40. I can NOT thrive in a suburb. It also helps that I found a damn nice area to live. But honestly I think this owes as much to deliberate urban planning efforts in the 80s/90s to "revitalize downtown" as it does to anything GenY wants. It is now easy and fun to live in the city again, instead of it being a desperate scary place; all the poor people now largely live way the fuck out in the burbs and have nightmare commutes to their shitty city jobs.

Apocryphon 15y ago

How does this correlate with West Coast startup culture? Is San Francisco really replacing Silicon Valley in terms where the companies, and so where the people, are going?