In stark contrast to the narrative being fed to you by the media, the data actually shows people are moving to the suburbs in record numbers. Seems like millenials move to the city when young so they can party, then they grow out of that phase eventually and want to leave.
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That’s what I thought. Once they have kids, they worry about their children’s safety and education, and realize that for their children’s sake, they have to move to suburban.
And being stuck in an apartment with kids is the pits.
Well, this “phenomena” if you will has been happening in the Fab 7x7 for decades. Anyone who grew up in the Fab 7x7 in my Big Bro’s era moved down to the peninsula and South Bay for mostly the reason of supposedly better and free schools for their kids and because they work down there. The relative expensiveness of the Fab 7x7 and say SV is simply not a situation where you will have folks staying for too long. If people can telecommute or take BART into the Fab 7x7 they are willing to do it for a cheaper, bigger house. The ones who can afford it or managed to find older rental apartments that are rent control protected then can somewhat make a go of it if they really like city living like a lot of people do.
I don’t think people have a choice. Cities are not building enough houses. If people want SFH with a good size backyard they have to move to the suburb. Unless you are seriously loaded of course.
It’s about the schools.
I do not think the population growth rate equals the desirability of the city vs suburbs. Since the vacancy is very low, both cities and suburbs are more or less fully populated. Even if everyone wants to live in the city, if new Construciton in the city is zero, population growth will be low. Also gentrification generally lowers population density since lower income people usually have more people in the same house.
Population growth is simply a proxy of new housing development.
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