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comment by ButterflyEffect
ButterflyEffect  ·  2641 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: American cities reached “Peak Millennial” in 2015

    Are large numbers of millennials really so enamored with city living that they will age and raise families inside the urban core, or will many of them, like earlier generations, eventually head to the suburbs in search of bigger homes and better school districts?

Something tells me that's no coincidence.





snoodog  ·  2641 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    suburbs in search of bigger homes and better school districts?

Living in suburbia sucks. Everything is far away, commuting to work eats hours out of your day, large houses have huge maintenance costs and HOA's are always on your ass about stupid shit. In theory due to the all the extra infrastructure costs and low density living in suburbia should also be prohibitively expensive. But its not, for one simple reason: You dont have to share with the have nots.

People who live in suburban high income enclaves dont have to deal with homelessness, school kids that dont speak English, streetwalkers and drug addicts. Those costs are all shifted onto the local city. Thus living in the city becomes equally or more expensive because even though city residents are using less infrastructure (Road, power, water, sewer) per person, city residents are responsible for providing social services for the needy. This eats a large chunk of resources and its something that suburbs dont have to pay for.

Until that problem is fixed families will continue to be forced into the burbs because its a cost effective way to give their kids a leg up in life and because it allows them to consume a larger share of resources than they otherwise would if they lived in the city.

ButterflyEffect  ·  2641 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I agree, I was referring to the structure of the NYTimes sentence.