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The whole thing about how millennials are going to move back to the cities and suburbs are going to die is exaggerated. It is like wishful thinking been taken as facts.
The move back to cities is not going to be in any way as significant as the fleeing to the suburbs in the past.
There are several things.
First, many millennials aren't married with children yet and some are still quite young. They may still choose to move to the burbs when they do get married and have children.
Second, the quality of schools and family amenities have not improved in these big cities. Instead, the focus has been singles, empty nesters, and yet presented as if it's for people.
Third, people often use millennials to describe upper middle class whites, and their preferences. The trend is that rich whites indeed are revitalizing cities, and you hear about them because duh. But meanwhile, minorities, and middle class of amy kind, are increasingly choosing suburbs for the quality of life and schools. To say that people will move toward the city is to ignore the economics of high costs of urban living, especially when ordinary millennials are going to be paying student loans for a while.
In fact, many singles also choose to live in suburbs where they can afford to buy a house, the property tax is reasonable, and there is still nature and trails. Let's face it. In most places, you still need a car. Even those who live in trendy high density areas tend to drive to their favorite coop and peace coffee places.
It's as if millennials never think about their budget, as if they make decisions purely on value and intellectual pursuit. They don't. They aren't stupid. They will do a calculation and figure out the real economic cost of urban living to them.
Rich whites are moving back to the cities. But it's not whether people dwell in cities or burbs. It's the switch of demographics between cities and burbs, but the burbs will not decline.
Our cities have become exclusive communities of the rich and smart. You have Rich people and poor people, but little in the middle. Trends in Seattle and Portland are already telling. With that, you also lose a sense of authentic community and cohesive social capital. Instead, you have high end designer liberalism, and those who serve them coffee.
I don't see how retirees are also going to move back to the cities in any significant number. I see all kinds. And in 15 years, boomers will start dying. What happens to these urban, small lofts? Heck, even more gay couples are marrying and having children, and the necessity of a gay neighborhood is less today as the society becomes more tolerant, including the suburbs where diversity is growing quickly.
First, many millennials aren't married with children yet and some are still quite young. They may still choose to move to the burbs when they do get married and have children.
It's pretty likely that more millennials will choose to not have children than any previous generation. And when they do have them, they'll tend to have smaller families. Having one child in an urban environment is much more doable than having three.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Costaexpress
Second, the quality of schools and family amenities have not improved in these big cities. Instead, the focus has been singles, empty nesters, and yet presented as if it's for people.
This depends upon the city you're talking about. There are cities like Seattle and Portland which are well known for having good (for cities) public school options. No one flees to the suburbs there when their kids are school age. Then there are cities like NYC, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco which have a mixture of "good" and "bad" public school options. If you jump through enough hoops as a parent you can easily stay in the public school system. Really I'd say that DC and Philadelphia are the only big U.S. cities I know where only a small slice of the public school system is considered acceptable.
This also doesn't take into account the proliferation of charter schools (which I do not think are a good thing). While most charters concentrate on low-income youth of color, there is a subset which markets to middle-class white urbanites. And even the private school route is much more doable if you only have one child, as noted above.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Costaexpress
Third, people often use millennials to describe upper middle class whites, and their preferences. The trend is that rich whites indeed are revitalizing cities, and you hear about them because duh. But meanwhile, minorities, and middle class of any kind, are increasingly choosing suburbs for the quality of life and schools. To say that people will move toward the city is to ignore the economics of high costs of urban living, especially when ordinary millennials are going to be paying student loans for a while.
This is a valid criticism. I think it's more a socio-economic class thing than a race thing however. If you go to any city with a large enough black middle class you will find an urban neighborhood or two popular among "buppies." Still on the whole I think there's something to the argument that urban living - even in gentrified areas - has little appeal to people who grew up in the city, and relatively little appeal to most first-generation suburbanites who heard stories about the problems of the city from their parents. White middle-class millennials are often three generations removed from the city, however, which means any negative family associations have had time to attenuate.
Second, the quality of schools and family amenities have not improved in these big cities. Instead, the focus has been singles, empty nesters, and yet presented as if it's for people.
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But meanwhile, minorities, and middle class of amy kind, are increasingly choosing suburbs for the quality of life and schools.
The thing is - as minorities and middle class leave the city for the suburbs, the schools in the suburbs "decline" on paper and the city schools "improve" on paper simply because the way we measure schools is really correlated with income, not the quality of the school itself. Many cities now have neighborhood schools that have improved dramatically. My kids are attending one now and it is on par with the best suburban schools.
If we lived in the City with one child who was just coming up to school age, and we were satisfied with our situation otherwise except for the public schools, I'd probably look at private schools. Expensive, yes, but so is a house + taxes in suburban neighborhoods with the best public schools, and no need to move back after 13 years when things will be even more expensive. Who ever said "school = public school" anyways? Now if there are no viable public or private school options, that's a different story...I would indeed just have to move in that case.
In fact, many singles also choose to live in suburbs where they can afford to buy a house, the property tax is reasonable, and there is still nature and trails. Let's face it. In most places, you still need a car. Even those who live in trendy high density areas tend to drive to their favorite coop and peace coffee places.
Driving 5 minutes to get your fix of coffee is A LOT different than driving 20 minutes. Especially if that 20 minutes is on top of a 45min - 1hr one-way commute.
My wife and I are having a crisis with this right now.
We love the inner-ring urban-suburb that we live in. The people feel like our people, of all colors. Great sense of community. As a bonus, it's having the next half of a mass transit light rail line go through it, and tons of greenways being interconnected. We care very deeply about giving our kids what we didn't have growing up: walk/bike-friendly areas, so they don't need to grow up dependent on a car.
However, we are starting to become wary of the affluence that is driving the areas we are in. We ALSO don't want our kids to be around too much prominently-white affluence and privilege... We had that too growing up in the same city, and we're afraid of shooting ourselves in the foot with ending up that way with our children. Besides, we're afraid of dropping several thousands on a house in our hip hoods. We aren't wealthy.
So we are looking for areas BEYOND the gentrifying neighborhoods that will have access to the same transit line, and the same interconnected greenway network, and thanks to infrastructure upgrades by the city with the transit line, all of these side-roads are getting bike/ped-friendly upgrades, added interconnecting streets, and many other upgrades, etc. There are several areas with homes we could afford, and a racial diversity that makes us feel comfortable that we aren't holing our kids up in a white ivory castle (excuse the metaphor). They are middle class families, and that's what we want.
Some of these neighborhoods along the corridor are getting pioneering transit-oriented, mixed-use developments built, and then connecting to the subdivisions. That's significant, because they are outside of the typical trending hip neighborhoods, but also adjacent to a nice suburban "business district" at the end of the line. So that should bring its own benefits to the neighborhood as well, right?
But then it comes down to schools. We just keep seeing the stats for these schools and they aren't the best. But we both very desperately want to be active in our kids' education, and the first thing you read on this topic is that it's all about parent involvement, right? So who's to say we couldn't be part of a cultural shift IN THOSE VERY NEIGHBORHOODS that haven't had the best neighborhood school before, to help improve it?
Any other Millennials have this same crisis?
Last edited by Sgt Campsalot; 08-01-2015 at 02:08 PM..
The whole thing about how millennials are going to move back to the cities and suburbs are going to die is exaggerated. It is like wishful thinking been taken as facts.
Yes and no.
Yes, some have grossly overstated the shift back to the inner-core cities. But, on the other side of it, some opponents of the idea are missing that the millennial generation is enormous and there's just more demand for all forms of living except rural and that there's a significant supply shortage of semi-urban high-quality housing in continuous, connected neighborhoods.
No, the suburbs are not dying. But we do seem to be seeing peak per capita demand for auto-centric subdivision living.
No, the cities aren't killing it. But we do seem to be seeing an increase in demand for and a shortage of supply of compact, albeit not tall, built forms that are continuous across neighborhoods. There's not strong interest in density if it's surrounded by expressways and strip malls or if it is missing the benefits enjoyed by older semi-urban environments, eg, good transit, easy walking and biking, and easy access to numerous local businesses.
I think the family in the city problem is that in many areas, especially desirable ones, when a person gets to needing a two, and especially a 3+ bedroom place to live, it gets extremely expensive. This basically forces people out of the city. Two bedrooms are even expensive with a lot of them being taken up by the roommate lifestyle rather than a family. Plus, people like to have a yard, so getting a SFH in a city area is very expensive in many places. The crappy SFHs around me in the city are going for upwards $600,000 and above, and these things are like old as heck. Why buy some old, small piece of junk when they can get a much better one for half the price out of the city in a suburb?
I think the family in the city problem is that in many areas, especially desirable ones, when a person gets to needing a two, and especially a 3+ bedroom place to live, it gets extremely expensive. This basically forces people out of the city. Two bedrooms are even expensive with a lot of them being taken up by the roommate lifestyle rather than a family. Plus, people like to have a yard, so getting a SFH in a city area is very expensive in many places. The crappy SFHs around me in the city are going for upwards $600,000 and above, and these things are like old as heck. Why buy some old, small piece of junk when they can get a much better one for half the price out of the city in a suburb?
It was all about location, location, location.
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