A resurgence in urban living? Trends in residential location patterns of young and older adults since 2000

Abstract

After decades of suburban-led metropolitan growth, some have heralded a resurgence of urban living in the U.S., particularly among young adults. So are Americans really turning their backs on suburbs in favor of more urban lifestyles? If so, what is the scope and scale of this urban resurgence? To answer these questions, we develop a typology of seven neighborhood types to analyze the residential location patterns of young and older U.S. adults from 2000 to 2011-15. Census and national travel survey data reveal that, rather than abandoning suburbs en masse, suburban population growth continues to far outpace that in urban neighborhoods. Although young adults are more likely than older adults to live in urban neighborhoods, recent urban population growth is neither associated with suburban decline, nor being led by young adults. So while planners can celebrate the revival of many urban neighborhoods in the 2000s, the era of suburban expansion appears far from over, at least in the U.S. Significant recent population growth in the newest, least dense suburban neighborhoods suggests that greenfield development remains the primary means to increase American housing supply. Shifting this metropolitan growth from the suburban fringe would likely require substantially expanding housing supply in already built-up areas, and bringing urban amenities and sustainability improvements to established inner-ring suburbs.

Parental Support in the Process of Choosing a First House (Case Study: Batak Families in Jakarta)

“…This is shown by the majority of Batak families whose final decision to make their choices is based on the location preferences within proximity to the facilities. This preference is similar to the findings of millennial first-time homebuyers in Jakarta (Mulyano, Rahadi, & Amaliah, 2020), first-time homebuyers in Kuala Lumpur (Tan, 2012), and young adults in the UK (Blumenberg et al, 2019). That is also a crucial factor for families with retirement intentions (Zahirovic and Gibler, 2019).…”

Generational differences in automobility: Comparing America's Millennials and Gen Xers using gradient boosting decision trees

“…Planners and policymakers may foresee an opportunity to reshape the urban and suburban communities to be less auto-centric and more transit-friendly. Our study indicates that even if Millennial young adults will move from urban neighborhoods to suburban neighborhoods (Blumenberg et al, 2019), "catch up" their delayed lifecycles to form family and raise children (Delbosc and Nakanishi, 2017), and earn higher income when the economy recovers (Blumenberg et al, 2016), they might still be less car-reliant than their Gen-X counterparts (Lee et al, 2019a;Lee et al, 2019b). Admittedly, whether this generational difference will be truly consistent over time is still an open question.…”

Socioeconomics of urban travel in the U.S.: Evidence from the 2017 NHTS

“…First, the continuous support from federal, state, and local sources to build transit infrastructure and encourage transit-oriented development has enabled urban residents to reduce car use and increase transit use (Spears, Boarnet and Houston, 2017;Lowe, 2013;Renne and Appleyard, 2019). Second, the past two decades have seen the rise and growth of the IT industry as well as other creative industries in urban neighborhoods and college towns with robust transit and non-motorized infrastructures; such "urban clustering" of industrial growth not only causes growth in the populations of transit-and non-motorized-friendly communities but also brings about lifestyle changes in terms of living, traveling, and shopping (Alder and Florida, 2021; Blumenberg et al, 2019;Lee, 2020;Wang, 2019). Third, higher gasoline price reduces the frequency and distance of driving (Bastian, Borjesson and Eliasson, 2016;Stapleton, Sorrell and Schwanen, 2017); and the fuel price is likely to remain high in the near future due to political and policy reasons.…”

“…Such trends can be attributed to many factors, including the expansion of transit-oriented developments (TOD) in urban America (Renne and Appleyard, 2019;Boarnet, Wang and Houston, 2017;Ewing and Cervero, 2010), intergenerational lifestyle changes (Garikapati et al, 2016;McDonald, 2015;Blumenberg et al, 2019), the increase of fuel price (Bastian, Borjesson and Eliasson, 2016;Stapleton, Sorrell and Schwanen, 2017), the rise of e-commerce and shared mobility (Brown, 2019;Cao, 2012;Dong, 2020;Le, Carrel and Shah, 2022), and increasing technologies that have enabled remote working (Aksoy et al, 2022;Su, McBride and Goulias, 2021). With the continuation of many of these factors, and recent changes due to the pandemic and the "Great Resignation," such as flexible work arrangements, it is an open and interesting question whether this trend in American urban travel will continue.…”