Americans are driving less — a trend that started in 2005, before the recession. We’re increasingly seeing young American adults opt for living in places that provide a variety of transportation options, especially cities with significant infrastructure for bicycling and walking.
So what happens over the next decade or two, as aging suburbanites need to sell their homes? Will younger middle-class and upper middle-class Americans buy those homes in the numbers that will be necessary?
James Briggs sure doesn’t think so. From his Letter from a millenial: We’re not going to buy your house in the Baltimore Business Journal:
But take heed, baby boomers and Generation Xers. If you’re planning to hold onto your home for years to come, don’t count on my generation — the millennials — to buy it from you.
The top reason for our lack of interest comes down to money. As the Los Angeles Times reported this month, people in my generation have mountains of student loan debt, and we’re so thoroughly freaked out by the Great Recession that we’d rather live in our parents’ basements than sign our names to more big loans.[…]
But even if we were rushing to banks and begging for hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra debt, most of us still wouldn’t want a house in the suburbs. As the New York Times reported last week, “the next generation of potential homebuyers prefer to live in developments with an array of housing types close to shops and mass transit.” […]
The New York Times cited an Urban Land Institute study that found 75 percent of people in my generation value walkability — a huge shift in attitude from previous generations that built and occupied America’s expansive suburbs. If you’re living in a house that is so far from public transportation, jobs, stores and restaurants that it requires a car for every trip, you might want to consider getting out now.
We’re also going to be seeing pretty dramatic infrastructure needs in many American suburbs over the next few decades, but suburban residents have been among those most likely to oppose tax increases for infrastructure.
I have many times argued on this blog and in my newspaper columns that many suburban neighborhoods can be retrofitted to adapt to changing lifestyle demands, but many current residents of those areas default to NIMBYish postures.
It’s going to be interesting to watch how all this plays out. We should know a lot more in the next couple of years.