Cities Can’t Assume a Continued Boost From the Young

[finehoe]

Over the past decade, many American cities have been transformed by young professionals of the millennial generation, with downtowns turning into bustling neighborhoods full of new apartments and pricey coffee bars.

But soon, cities may start running out of millennials.

A number of demographers, along with economists and real estate consultants, are starting to contemplate what urban cores will look like now that the generation — America's largest — is cresting.

Millennials are generally considered to be those born between the early 1980s and late 1990s or early 2000s, and many in this generation are aging from their 20s into the more traditionally suburban child-raising years. There are already some signs that the inflow of young professionals into cities has reached its peak, and that the outflow of mid-30s couples to the suburbs has resumed after stalling during the Great Recession.

Dowell Myers, a professor of demography and urban planning at the University of Southern California, recently published a paper that noted American cities reached "peak millennial" in 2015. Over the next few years, he predicts, the growth in demand for urban living is likely to stall.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/upshot/peak-millennial-cities-cant-assume-a-continued-boost-from-the-young.html

[finehoe]

Another view:

Here's What's Wrong With That 'Peak Millennials' Story

the story offers two mistaken premises: first, that the growth of young adults in cities has been driven primarily by the large size of the Millennial generation, and second, that the affinity of young adults for cities is waning. Our research shows that neither of these premises is true. The movement of young adults to the city has been gathering steam for more than 25 years, and the number of young adults in cities was actually increasing during the 1990s—at a time when the number of 25- to 34-year-olds nationally was actually declining. And the relative preference of young adults for city living continues to increase.

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2017/01/flood-tide-not-ebb-tide-for-young-adults-in-cities/514283/