Suburbs Try to Prevent an Exodus as Young Adults Move to Cities and Stay

Bethesda's not cheap, but most of DC proper is more expensive, and anecdotally (as a DC resident), most DC-resident friends of mine could afford to live in the nicer DC suburbs if they wanted to, but choose to live in the city instead. The population that's the focus of this article isn't deciding between downtown and some Hagerstown or whatnot.

Well said. I also have a feeling that many of the younger people who are staying in these well-heeled suburbs are either living with their parents or have been given their childhood homes as their parents move away in retirement.

Not only do the NYC suburbs have an expensive cost of entry (rentals are nearly non-existent in many of them) they also have high ongoing carrying costs.

If you have more than one school age child, you may come out ahead versus paying for private school, but for those without school age children you are paying a lot of money for not much in return. It is for this reason many people are waiting until their children are actually ready to start school before moving out into the suburbs. That can easily be mid to late 30s for the demographic that can afford these suburbs in the first place.

Let's not forget that the article is ignoring the fact that the demographic shift isn't that people with kids are choosing to stay in the city. Its that people are waiting longer to have kids, so they are waiting longer to move to the suburbs.

Not saying that there aren't an increasing number of people choosing to stay in the city with kids. I'm one of them. I have two kids and live in a high-rise. But the fact of the matter is that we are a rarity in my neighborhood. Everyone else my age in the building has zero kids.

> They are "graying" because it takes more time to accumulate the money to live there.

The article mentions that this is part of the effect ("late arrivals" because people have kids later, and having kids and deciding to move out of the city to the suburbs often go hand in hand.)

But they are also "graying" because the US as a whole is; the 25-34yo population segment of interest here is smaller than it was in 2000.

The New York Times likes to write these articles about upper class lifestyle issues as if they apply to a more general audience.

Des Moines.

Here me out! I live in the Chicago suburbs; I commute to the West Loop every day. Traffic! High costs! And so forth.

This weekend, I was in Des Moines for a wedding. I met people in their historic East Village. Great bar scene, great craft brew scene. Everyone was friendly! Everyone bicycles around! I would actually consider picking up from Chicago and living in Des Moines, as it seems to be the midwest version of AshvilleNC or perhaps Ann Arbor, but before Ann Arbor blew up and got expensive.

I would have never thought I'd say, "Des Moines is pretty fucking awesome, and I could live here."

My great alternative was leaving the west at 19, and trying out different cities overseas. Now 33, I've had multi-month to multi-year stints in five different cities in mainland China (~100,000 - 24 million), Bangkok, London, Los Angeles and Taipei. Like you, I've found that the smaller ones appeal more to me, with maybe bi-weekly trips to a larger city. With kids on the way, after an exploratory trip for the serious consideration of buying some forest in New Zealand, my wife and I now look forward to checking out France. If I had invested in a mortgage, there's no way I'd be this mobile, with such rich experience. I've never owned a car, or driven one (legally), but for one slab of my self-managed 'weekend' spent five hours yesterday on a motorbike riding through some of the most spectacular scenery I've yet found, the upper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanpan_River ... no regrets with this path, life is fantastic!

Agreed. There's plenty of people leaving around Greater London who only commute for work. A place like Wimbledon might be a solid 40 minutes trip out of London (at the end of a tube line) but if you live there, there's everything you want nearby and you don't have to go anywhere else to find a nice little town that you can walk about and enjoy yourself in.

A suburb that isn't a place where you can actually live - there's a name for that in french, we call them cités dortoirs - dormitory towns. No one wants to live there.

I believe that's the major reason. (Based solely on my anecdotal evidence.) Most young folks I know don't want to be car-dependent.

They often cite gas prices as the primary reason. Gas is already expensive, and the young people I know expect prices to go much, much higher.

Some of them also mention exercise as a reason.

This is an experiment that Sunnyvale is trying to pull off. They are creating a fairly tight down town with housing, shops, and easy access to mass transit; all walkable. I don't believe they have a "real" grocery client there yet (there is a Target but its not like a Safeway or Trader Joe's) but that would probably be the right move. I'm watching the project closely to see how effective it is.

Even better alternate title: "Urban Sprawl Finally Solved"

The one word answer is 'gentrification', depending upon how you feel about that.

Well my own personal perspective is that I'd like to live somewhere that I can do gardening, grow veg[1] and sometimes go for a walk and see some wildlife. I'd also like to live in a place where the average age isn't 40 years older than I am so that I could have some kind of social life without driving for miles (ideally I don't want to drive at all). Which is all very unrealistic, and I'll probably end up living in the middle of nowhere with no social life if I ever have enough money to afford a house.

I don't think it's good for the social makeup of small towns and villages. Healthy communities need people of all ages, not just retirees.

[1] this is kinda possible in a city, but usually costs a fortune. I used to live near allotments in Edinburgh but they were super expensive to rent.

It's a problem for suburban towns because all towns rely on enough people living there to produce enough tax revenue to keep the town running.

I think this is a change in the New York area mostly. Back in the 70s-mid 80s NYC was a much more dangerous place and living in the suburbs was cheap. Young people in the city then moved to the suburbs to escape rents and high crime. However now the suburbs like Westchester, Long Island have become very expensive with very high taxes.

Since these suburbs are comparatively wealthy the citizens fight against high density development. So if you are a young person that grew up on Long Island you have the choice of paying $1400 to live in someone's illegal basement apartment, living in one of the few decent complexes for $2000+ or move to NYC. It is easy to see why moving to NYC is very attractive then. When you are single or a couple it is good to live in the city as there are plentiful jobs and entertainment options.

So I think that there is not a massive landslide of people leaving the suburbs I think it is just that people are having children much later, the city is now safe, and there are no cheap options for singles/childless couples in the suburbs in the NYC metro area. People still move from NYC to the suburbs. And in cheaper metro areas the suburbs are growing very fast because they are much like the situation that existed in NYC in the 70s-mid 80s

Move to Baltimore it is cheaper to live in the city than the suburbs.

So tell that to the renters in SF who are learning a very hard enconomic lesseon about the downsides of not owning your own home

Just bought a house, but in the city, not the suburbs. I was pleasantly surprised to see that non-corded electric mowers exist. My mower weighs next to nothing, is whisper quiet, and one charge lasts me several cuts. Granted, its a small yard, but the hassle of moving heavy equipment, mixing gas and oil, dealing with loud noise, dealing with exhaust, pull start pain, etc are long gone.

Now I'm just waiting on the affordable electric car. Gas, even in the best of circumstances, is just too much of a hassle and requires much more complex machines than electric.

Interesting how peoples' experiences differ. I did mowing/lawn care work through high school and college, and loved having hours and hours in the sun to just think. I have two (unpublished) novels that I was able to plot and write thanks to that job.

I've cut grass all of my life, starting with about 3 acres (not a typo) of grass growing up. I'll gladly trade 30 minutes of easy work once a week for being able to sit out back of the house without staring directly into a neighbor's window.

But to each their own. If you don't like cutting grass, there are people who will do it for you for a reasonable amount of money.

Funny enough, that's my problem with suburbia. :)

"The people" is the exact reason I prefer urban settings to suburban.

How about moving out into the countryside? Then people would bother you even less :)

Ill never understand the "allure" of living in the burbs other than having space. Cookie cutter houses in cookie cutter developments separated by long stretches of mini-highways and strip malls. Everything is brand new and completely sterile.

I would argue that paying $900,000 for any house isn't really a great investment.

This rings true to me. If you're going to be actively dating all the way into your 30s, living in the suburbs is going to make things much harder.

I'll acknowledge it.

You pay > $7000/month for rent? 4200 pounds per month?

Really? I pay £1800 a month for a privately rented three bedroom house 20 minutes from central London. Friends of mine pay maybe £2000 for a similar sized place in zone 2 North London.