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I suppose some lived with their parents until they got married, then bought a house. Still, you'd expect more, not less moving back in with mom or dad in a bad economic climate. A good deal probably have historically rented in suburbs as well, although these days low-end suburban rental complexes can be more unsafe than cities.
I agree though that virtually no one buys a house right out of college. Even in places where the real estate is cheap enough to do so, usually a 22-year old doesn't have the credit needed to buy a house, even if they want to.
Maybe the bigger change is not so much young people moving to cities, but staying there for the long haul. So instead of moving out right after getting married, they stick around, even after having kids.
The interesting question is what will happen when the kids of these new urbanists hit school age. The old conventional wisdom is they'll move to the burbs, but by that time (adding together delayed marriage and childbirth), most of the parents will be in their early-to-late 30s. People are pretty set in their ways by then, and I expect a surprising number will stay and jump through whatever hoops they need to (private school, magnets, charters, moving to a part of the city with better schools, etc).
I'm glad you brought that up because I keep hearing "young adults" are moving back to the city, but I havent seen any studies about people staying in the city once they have kids. To me, that is really the telling part if city is doing its job. I think its great that kids are moving into the city, but are they staying and raising their kids and sending them to public schools that in past have been deemed to be under performing. You have always had parents sending their kids to private and magnet schools, but I think its its beneficial to cities when parents are staying and sending kids to those schools that have been bad in the past and trying to make it work.
The interesting question is what will happen when the kids of these new urbanists hit school age. The old conventional wisdom is they'll move to the burbs, but by that time (adding together delayed marriage and childbirth), most of the parents will be in their early-to-late 30s. People are pretty set in their ways by then, and I expect a surprising number will stay and jump through whatever hoops they need to (private school, magnets, charters, moving to a part of the city with better schools, etc).
Well, there's Tribeca (NYC), which is basically Yuppiespawn territory nowadays; baby stores and overpriced pre-K programs everywhere you look. But I suspect overall the school systems will remain an anchor on the cities for some time.
It's not all that surprising the cities are growing faster than the suburbs; for a long while many of them were absolutely horrific places, by and large (Washington, D.C. being a good example). They experienced population loss during that time, and they have a lot of ground to recover.
A fluff article with little substance. I can't imagine where that Denver woman's parents worked in the metro area that was a 45 min. train ride (Train? The light rail tax was passed in 2004 and started being collected in 2005. The first trains appeared around 2006-7.)
A fluff article with little substance. I can't imagine where that Denver woman's parents worked in the metro area that was a 45 min. train ride (Train? The light rail tax was passed in 2004 and started being collected in 2005. The first trains appeared around 2006-7.)
Haha do you dispute the data then? Was all of this stuff made up?
More broadly I think that the millenials generation is too broke, as a whole, to a) consider kids and b) move them to the suburbs. That suburb-college town-city-suburb-grave chain has been broken in many cases by the economic realities of the u.s. at present time. Many I know here bought overvalued houses in 06 or 07 and are now having kids. It's going to be hard to make the jump to the suburbs, and the ones that are affordable to them aren't really any improvement, anyway.
That suburb-college town-city-suburb-grave chain really only applies to one generation, the Boomers, and not even them really, as a lot of retiring Boomers are downsizing and moving into walkable urban places. Before the Boomers there weren't all that many suburbs. So it's a supposedly immutable tradition that only spans one generation. Even GenXers don't really count: we were the ones born into the suburbs in a big way, but also the ones most disgusted by them, and the youngest Xers are the folks in their early thirties just getting around to getting married and having kids but not being so enthusiastic about leaving their neighborhood coffee shop to move to cul-de-sac land.
There are other options when it comes to schools. If middle-class urban residents can turn a neighborhood around, why not a school district?
Haha do you dispute the data then? Was all of this stuff made up?
Like this?
Roughly 52 of the 73 cities with population of greater than 250,000 showed faster annual growth (or slower rates of losses) in 2011 than their average growth over the last decade. Cities switching from declines to gains included Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn.
Texas dominated the list of the 15 fastest-growing large cities from April 2010 to July 2011, including Round Rock, Austin, Plano, McKinney, Frisco, Denton, McAllen and Carrollton.
Now for starts, how could it be "roughly" 52 out of 73 cities? And the statement does not support the contention that the cities grew faster than the suburbs, just that "roughly" 52 cities either grew OR had slower rates of loss in 2011. Some of the Texas cities noted are actually suburbs themselves, e.g. Plano , McKinney, Frisco and Carrolton near Dallas; Round Rock near Austin.
The article does list several cities that grew more than their suburbs, e.g. New Orleans (an anomoly in any data set), Atlanta, Denver, DC, and Charlotte, NC.
Another quote:
"Primary cities in large metropolitan areas with populations of more than 1 million grew by 1.1 percent last year, compared with 0.9 percent in surrounding suburbs. While the definitions of city and suburb have changed over the decades, it's the first time that growth of large core cities outpaced that of suburbs since the early 1900s."
Something i never understood. Where were these young adults moving too after college? I keep seeing reports of young people moving back into the city, but i'm confused because I always assumed young adults moved to the city after college. Were they moving straight to the suburbs or something?
yes, there were historically lots of high end suburban garden apt complexes that drew singles in many cities (perhaps in some there still are?) I knew many such in jacksonville in the 1980s (technically IN the city, because it was Jacksonville) and several in the suburbs of baltimore in that era.
this is HUGE. We've argued about the cultural shift in the DC forums - a skeptic of the shift pointed out that A. DC though finally growing, was still growing more slowly than the suburbs in the DC area and B. in cities like Philly and Chicago, touted for their core revivals, the center city OVERALL was still declining in population. This led to long arguments about the meaning of the core, the value of political boundaries, etc.
That growth in the center cities of the DC area are growing significantly FASTER than the suburbs is a big change. That the center cities of Philly and Chicago, POLITICALLY defined, not just the cores or downtowns, are growing (bearing in mind there could be data problems) is huge.
That the city of Philadelphia is growing faster than its suburbs, even if only by a little, is flabbergasting.
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