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NO. They are completely wrong. Our family moved to an urban/very walkable neighborhood. It has been awful. We have learned all the 100 reasons why people moved out to the suburbs and STAYED THERE. The city/urban landscape is noisy, dirty, congested, and litered with visitors who use the streets and people's porch's as their trash can. There are also no garages. For the records, we live in a very nice urban neighborhood where the house value are over half a million for a 4-bedroom house. So it's pretty upscale, and still we found that people today, and life in general today, is a lot louder, more messy, and more intrusive than it has ever been. Bottom line...people don't know (and may never again learn) how to live in very close proximity to other people. Even nice old retired couples have no respect for how loud they talk, where their pets poop, or where they throw their cigarettes. We also find ourselves being "crusaders for neighborhood programs" like clean-ups and noise reduction issues, which we have no time for in our busy lives. We will never ever ever again move to a place where the house walls are near the property line or where we have to share walls with someone else. It is just such a darn hassle. Again, we learned a ton of reasons why people moved out to the suburbs and didn't come back. Stay in the suburbs. This whole urban trend is short-lived. People will have the same experiences we did and the whole urban thing will die out as quickly as it has come up. Trust me, there are only a few place in the country where urban is done well--and they all are very expensive (Washington DC, New York/Soho, San Fran, Seattle, LA).
Responses like this are a huge part of the problem, creating a false dichotomy that people either want very urban or very suburban settings and then supporting that false dichotomy with the "evidence" of their experience with one particularly bad or extreme example for or against one side or the other of that false dichotomy. But these responses miss out on a huge middle ground of suburbs styled in the form of older steetcar suburbs with mildly urban main street strips. Someone else brought up the bell curve of preference, and responses like StayIntheBurbs' basically take the wings of the curve and cut out the middle.
As to the original question, there's just more people, especially in the massive Millennial generation, so there's bound to be more demand for all residential forms across the transects, from rural to very urban.
I once came across (sorry, don't recall title or author) an estimate for the proportion of urban-philes in the general population…around 10%. Just a fraction of the size listed earlier, "30-40% of people wanted walkable urbanism".
I'm guessing it's 10% of the total population and 30-40% of the young, white, college educated population.
The main trend I think is most changing lifestyles is need to be in any specific location to work. If your a boomer you know that companies who wanted top people had to be located in areas that offered them a certain standard of lifestyle. Well that is more and more not the case as remote work from home is so common how. Example is if you ever visited the NYSE. The numbers are a shadow of past because of computerization. In many western nations their exchanges more like being closed except for boards working and few people on business other than trading. A example is my nephew. He is COO of company with manufacturing and offices in Conn.; New Jersey(2) and California. He is 55 and lives in same home which he was first hired in as company manager in Conn. He told me last time he visited he said they are expanding to Dallas. CEO informed him and if he wanted to move there to let him know so they could plan office space for him. Since he wants to return in retirement he says he is likely to move now. Following work which was the norm not that many years go is not nearly has common now in many professions that can more and more be done remotely.
A fantasy based on what they would like to believe?
I once came across (sorry, don't recall title or author) an estimate for the proportion of urban-philes in the general population…around 10%. Just a fraction of the size listed earlier, "30-40% of people wanted walkable urbanism".
One glaring omission….
What percentage of the population wants a rural setting? How many people want to be farmers, or ranchers, or even forest rangers?
Its also true that people's actions often differ from their words.
And maybe you want it walkable, but don't want the trade-offs.
Actually there are a lot of people in the suburbs aching for walking suburbs. Usually those are the older railroad suburbs, that offer walkabiliity but also feature good schools and more space.
Of course what is walkable is subjective. I feel walkable is up to a mile. But some won't walk more than two blocks.
Mass transit agencies view 1/4 mile as their useful radius.
Some people may want what could be described as a walkable suburb. I imagine sprinkling some convenience stores here and there in an existing suburb.
Convenience stores does not walkable make.
But walkability is tricky. Some people say their neighborhood is walkable, but they mean only recreationally; walking (or biking) for utility (usually meaning one needs to leave their neighborhood) might be unpleasant, unsafe, or impractical. On the other end, a neighborhood may not be the picturesque leafy ideal for a nice stroll with the family on a Sunday afternoon, but the layout (of both streets and distribution of uses) may be such that getting to places (eg, school, grocery store, work, commuter rail station) by foot or bike is practical.
The Selfie VoteWhere Millennials Are Leading America by Kristen Soltis Anderson.
The book is mostly about politics. However, the author does discuss the living arrangements of today's young adults.
To summarize, Millenials aren't much creating new suburban house holds. Because they can't afford it. For their generation the economy sucks.
Many Millenials live in some form of shared housing, to cope with expenses. And are tending to move to the urban areas of relatively affordable metropolitan areas.
The assumption may be that Millennials will flock to the suburbs to raise families-but will they be able to afford to?
Last edited by Tim Randal Walker; 06-28-2017 at 07:17 PM..
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