urbanism

The housing market and aging are turning millennials into what they swore they'd never become: their suburban parents.

You just explained why right now. Not being their suburban parents is too popular for its own good. Older people live in cities too, you see it all the time in Europe and Asia.

A few years of suburban living had made the couple "miserable," says Sutton, a 34-year-old writer and content creator. "The closest coffee shop was 15 to 20 minutes away, there wasn't a lot to do in the area, and none of our friends wanted to make the drive to visit us," she says. "It was so isolating." They now have 1,500 fewer square feet of living space, one fewer car, and no yard, but they're much happier. They're surrounded by restaurants, live music, parks, and many other "third places" to meet people and hang out. They're regulars at their favorite neighborhood bar and bodega, where, Sutton says, "we know everyone by name and vice versa."

Again, you're just reinforcing that suburbs aren't "desirable" they're a gilded ghetto at best. So does that mean we should force more urbanism and public transit because "car-dependent suburbs are for yucky poor people!" So clearly this article is all about how suburbs are undesirable, bad places and that cities are where it's at, right?

For nearly two decades millennials morphed dense, amenity-rich urban neighborhoods across America into exclusive playgrounds for the young and childless. Compared with Gen Xers and baby boomers, a much larger share of millennials moved to cities in their young adulthood — and stayed for longer. They wanted craft-cocktail bars over picket fences, walkable commutes over two-car garages, SoulCycle over swimming pools. In turn, cities were yassified in their image.

Okay, that was dumb but it seems like you're just further explaining the case. Millennials like the city even well into their 40s. Our middle aged people still like cities, and still have good taste. But why are you blaming millennials for this?

That "youthification" trend has accelerated: Cities are getting younger, faster, from San Francisco to Boston, Salt Lake City to Seattle, Austin to Denver. But it's not millennials who are making them younger — it's Gen Zers. (Gen Z, it should be noted, isn't exactly thriving in urban real-estate markets. About a third of Gen Z adults are thought to live with their parents, and many don't think they'll ever be able to own a home.) Millennials, meanwhile, are aging out and getting priced out into suburbia.

Oh, don't get me started on Gen Z. I've been stuck in bumfuck nowhere my whole life and never got to experience shit. So clearly this is evidence of a growing nationwide problem where housing is now seen as a luxury good. Even worse, cities where carbon emissions per capita are lower and there are strong senses of community are now privileges for the wealthiest of the wealthiest. Look at the "reward" San Francisco got for quite literally being the best place in the US (in theory). San Francisco succeeded itself to death and now the whole state is like continential Hawai'i. So good it's bad.

And since there aren't enough family-sized apartments in urban areas to keep up with demand, in part because studios and one-bedrooms are more profitable for developers to build, that demand shot up in the suburbs

So just build more in the cities. Everyone loves cities so you can easily make a killing by building the things people want, right? You will NEVER run out of customers.

It's expensive to live in the places millennials prefer: walkable communities with lots of shops, restaurants, and public space. An analysis published last year found that homebuyers in the 35 biggest American metropolitan areas paid 34% more to live in walkable neighborhoods, while renters paid 41% more. Paul Stout, a millennial landscape-architecture student with a popular urbanist TikTok account called Talking Cities, says he constantly hears from followers who wish they could afford a home within walking distance of places like coffee shops.

But WHY is it expensive?

Millennials could help transform suburban sprawl into town-like communities or small cities with more third places and a stronger sense of community, Panova says.

Oh.....now I get it. The rich want to keep the cities all to themselves, kick out us poors to the suburbs and then tauntingly suggest maybe we can make bumfuck nowhere cool. Or alternatively, the wealthy can stay in their country clubs in the suburbs. Millennials are the reason urban real estate is so valuable in the first place, and this is how you thank them? San Francisco becoming a country club turned it into a national punchline and your suggestion is "cities are for billionaires exclusively now. Go gentrify your red state shitholes." Maybe I'd be more happy to oblige if I lived in , I'd be happy in both London and Brighton and Bristol alike, but have you lived in the boonies in the US? It's an existential nightmare. There's a reason why demand for cities are so high in the US.

Young people are not your soldiers for the DNC, the infrastructure in the cities is already there, just keep building piece by piece instead of a whole bunch of shit at once.

TL;DR: You will live in the barn, you will drive the tin can, you will have no free time and you will be happy.