
Millennials are flocking to the Pacific Northwest, study finds - hhs
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-19/millennials-moving-west-portland-seattle
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hanniabu
Title: Millennials are flocking to the Pacific Northwest, study finds

Article: 2017 data suggests the westward trend has faded in recent years, in
favor of areas like New Haven-Milford, Connecticut; Madison, Wisconsin; and
Syracuse, New York.

So it sounds like the title should have been "Millennials are flocking East,
study finds"

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ajmurmann
It almost felt like reading one of those machine-generated finance articles
that fill in sentences with some stock statistics.

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crabasa
I am not a millennial (born in 1977) but the combination of the strong
regional economy and access to natural beauty (Puget Sound, Pacific Ocean,
Olympic Peninsula, etc) is really amazing.

On top of this, the area has a significant resistance to the kind of
temperature highs that are hitting most of the country right now. I spent the
weekend camping on Vancouver Island where the high was 71 when I was there.

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scythe
The Seattle metro has grown by more than 10% every decade since 1940:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_metropolitan_area](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_metropolitan_area)

I think this trend has a few decades left to go, especially as trans-Pacific
trade (hopefully) continues to increase.

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feketegy
They saw the Francis Mallmann episode from Chef's Table on Netflix?

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reilly3000
PWN FTW.

PS. Spokane is terrible nobody should move here.

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VRay
Spokane is great, so long as you don't need a job

You might be able to make $80k as an engineer if you really push for it

You can buy a lordly mansion for $700k and the floor's the limit on normal
houses

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gmclellan
Millennial logic: Move to a place with a growing population, but expect rent
to go down, and complain when it doesn’t.

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jacobmoe
Boomer logic: oppose every new construction project anywhere near your
neighborhood and mock millennials when they find there is a scarcity of
affordable housing.

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notus
Also Boomer logic: cut down every rezoning proposal for no reason

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spease
I don’t think this is inherent to Boomers so much as the general reaction of
people who have chosen to live someplace specifically because it has a small
town feel.

Instead of finding new ways to cram people into smaller spaces, we should be
trying to incentivize businesses to spread out and open new branches. This has
the side effect of encouraging diversity and social mobility.

Converting sprawling residential areas into high-density urban areas without
upgrading infrastructure and public transit like we have been doing leads to a
lot of issues.

People are gradually getting stuck choosing between skyrocketing real estate
prices and massive contention for shared resources in urban areas, or
languishing opportunities and pay in rural areas.

Not to mention the consequences of climate change, and the additional risk of
concentrating more people in fewer places. Or the impact on political power
due to the way the Senate and Electoral College are structured.

So I disagree that this is just a “housing crisis” where building more housing
is the obvious solution. That will lead to secondary costs and problems that
could well be crises themselves. Plus I think we have enough housing, it’s
just that there aren’t equal opportunities across the country where the
housing surplus exists.

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notus
Rezoning plans usually include refactoring to current infrastructure and
public transit. If you let things sprawl then you make infrastructure and
public transit cost more and less likely to ever happen. Take Austin for
example, they've spent millions on rezoning plans and they always get shut
down from the NIMBY types. Meanwhile lower income individuals in Austin suffer
due to poor public transportation and increasing cost of living. Additionally
adding more efficient and convenient public transportation cuts down on
personal vehicle usage and having people live in higher densities incentivizes
public transportation efforts. If there is too much sprawl they can't really
meet the needs of everyone and remain convenient.

