
Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century - trevin
http://placeshakers.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/generation-ys-great-migration/
======
scarmig
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
Chicago shrank by 6.9% from 2000-2010.

~~~
scarmig
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/2011-04-07-1Aciti...](http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-04-07-1Acities07_ST_N.htm#table)

~~~
MrFoof
Not all cities are created equally. I'm guessing Chicago is feeling much of
what the same Pittsburgh is, each being on different edges of the rust belt.

For example, Boston is growing at a decent rate. Boston however has a
tremendous education, health care, biotech/pharma, finance and high-tech
industries. Boston crime is also at all-time lows. However, small cities in
Massachusetts such as New Bedford, Fall River, Worcester, and Lowell are
continuing to see people move out -- usually towards Boston, but also towards
smaller suburbs that are continuing to grow. Actually, Boston bedroom
communities aren't exactly hurting, as they're pretty decent at attracting
lots of good jobs on their own (particularly the 128 corridor).

A great contrast is Philadelphia versus Pittsburgh. Although within the same
state, they're still 300 miles apart and the differences in their industries
and crime do much to determine how their populations are growing and falling
respectively.

~~~
meddlepal
Worcester is actually growing. I grew up in that city, lived there for most of
my life, though I do not live there anymore. It's not shrinking by any means,
just examining the census numbers shows it outpacing Boston in growth 4.9% to
4.8% between 2000 and 2010.

Worcester is at a cross-roads now. It has excellent proximity to Boston and
Providence. It has a strong bio-medical industry as well as three highly
regarded universities (Holy Cross, WPI, and Clark) as well as several smaller,
less known ones. Several major hospitals too. If Massachusetts can sort out
the commuter rail situation and cut travel time down to <45min between
Worcester and Boston then it could really take off as an alternative to Boston
for people with families and on budgets.

It does have its issues. Certain neighborhoods are giant crime-pits (Main
South, Vernon Hill etc.) On the other hand it has an extremely safe, pleasant
west-side with some pockets of high-affluence. East and North Worcester range
from OK to good. It's a very spread out city despite having 180K people living
in it which unfortunately means cars are a must.

It's all going to be about transportation. Commuter rail to Boston will
improve, part of the deal to allow CSX to expand its freight yard in Worcester
was to add 10 - 20 more trains to Worcester between now and 2020. The Pike
bypasses Worcester but since the completion of the 146 connector that has
stopped being a real issue. If those things occur, and it is a big-if, expect
the urban-downtown area of Worcester to boom as it's a small downtown area and
it will be important to tightly pack around the train station because of the
lack of transportation around the rest of the city.

------
learc83
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.

~~~
TheFuture
EXACTLY. This notion that gen y is some sort of elightend urban dweller is
ridiculous. Gen y is the most immature gen ever in American history. They
treat college like a party, an excuse to extend childish behavior, and just
throw the bill on some low interest student loans. No wonder they all rent,
their credit is terrible. And then they don't get that 80k job handed to them,
so they still work at Starbucks at 26yrs old with a BA in pyschology or poli
sci, which they took because the classes were easy.

I agree, its all about having kids and growing up. Once your children become
your priority, your school district becomes important, and every major urban
center in the USA has a school system somewhere between bad and god-awful.
Watch the movies Waiting For Superman and The Cartel if you want to see what a
mess that situation is. I don't see it getting resolved in the next 5-10
years, which is when gen y will start having kids.

~~~
nitrogen
_They treat college like a party, an excuse to extend childish behavior_

Are you sure this is a recent phenomenon? Just two examples I'm aware of:

1978: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077975/>

1985: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/>

~~~
sbierwagen
Pointless addendum: Animal House was made in 1978, but _set_ in 1961.

Rolling Stone recently ran an article on the fratboy culture at Dartmouth:
(the university "Faber College" was based on)
[http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/confessions-of-
an-i...](http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/confessions-of-an-ivy-
league-frat-boy-inside-dartmouths-hazing-abuses-20120328?print=true)

~~~
gammarator
"The Real Animal House" [1] is also worth a read--it's about the Dartmouth
fraternity experiences of one of the authors of Animal House. Somehow it makes
the recreational vomiting seem more fun than the Rolling Stone article.

(It was amazing and disturbing how many of the "traditions" described in the
book are mentioned in the Rolling Stone article, 50 years later...)

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Real-Animal-House-
Fraternity/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Real-Animal-House-
Fraternity/dp/B00375LO4Q/)

------
lcargill99
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.

~~~
msutherl
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.

------
nostromo
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-
releas...](http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/04/best-buy-releases-
store-locations-closure-list/)).

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.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Northgate isn't out in the suburbs, it's quite well inside of Seattle's city
limits. And Amazon is actually doubling down on their presence in South Lake
Union.

> I know a number of young people who would stay away from Microsoft because
> of the dreaded commute to Redmond.

I did it for four years and will never do it again, Connector or not.

~~~
sbierwagen

      Northgate isn't out in the suburbs, it's quite well inside 
      of Seattle's city limits.
    

?

I live at 9th and Madison, and I don't own a car. Northgate is way the hell
far away from downtown: probably 20 minutes by bus.

------
JVIDEL
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...

------
twelvechairs
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
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>

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.

------
saryant
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
I dream of a post-car America. But wouldn't that require places like Houston
to build massive amounts of public transport?

~~~
saryant
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
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.

------
darksaga
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>)

~~~
datasage
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.

------
ekianjo
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.

------
rgrieselhuber
Wait until they have kids.

------
BobertK
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
_Most older Americans are broke._

Source? By the last numbers I've seen, net wealth increases directly with age.

~~~
BobertK
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

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

------
rayiner
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
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
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.

~~~
ryanhuff
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
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.

------
egypturnash
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
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?

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

------
davidf18
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...

------
michaelochurch
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
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.

