By Morley Winograd and
Michael D. Hais
Back in the 1950s and
60s when Baby Boomers
were young, places like
Los Angeles led the
nation’s explosive
growth in suburban
living that has defined
the American Dream ever
since. As Kevin Roderick
observed, the San
Fernando Valley became,
by extension, “America’s
suburb” – a model
which would be repeated
in virtually every
community across the
country.
These suburbs –
perfectly suited to the
sun-washed car culture
of Southern California –
have remained the ideal
for most Americans. And
they remain so for the
children of Boomer and
Generation X parents,
Millennials, (born
1982-2003), who express
the same strong interest
in raising their
families in suburban
settings.
According to the most
recent generational
survey research, done
for Washington-based
think tank,
NDN, by
Frank N. Magid
Associates, 43
percent of Millennials
describe suburbs as
their “ideal place to
live,” compared to just
31 percent of older
generations. In the same
survey, a majority of
older generations (56%)
expressed a preference
for either small town or
rural living. This may
reflect the roots of
many older Americans,
who are more likely to
have grown up outside of
a major metropolis, or
it may indicate a desire
of older people for a
presumably simpler
lifestyle.
By contrast, these
locations were cited by
only 34 percent of
Millennials as their
preferred place to live.
A majority (54%) of
Millennials live in
suburban America and
most of those who do
express a preference for
raising their own
families in similar
settings. Even though
big cities are often
thought of as the place
where young people
prefer to live and work,
only 17 percent of
Millennials say they
want to live in one,
less than a third of
those expressing a
preference for suburban
living. Nor are they
particularly anxious to
spend their lives as
renters in dense, urban
locations. A full 64
percent of Millennials
surveyed, said it was
“very important” to have
an opportunity to own
their own home. Twenty
percent of adult
Millennials
named owning a home
as one of their most
important priorities in
life, right behind being
a good parent and having
a successful marriage.
This suggests that some
of the greatest
opportunities in housing
will be in those
metropolitan areas that
can provide the same
amenities of suburban
life that Los Angeles
did sixty years ago. In
this Millennials are
just like their parents
who moved to the suburbs
in order to buy their
own home, with a front
and back yard, however
small, in a safe
neighborhood with good
schools.
Given the fact that
nearly four in five
Millennials express a
desire to have children,
cities that wish to
attract Millennials for
the long-term will have
to offer these same
benefits. These
Millennial metropolises
also will need to be
built with the active
participation of their
citizens, using the most
modern communication
technologies, to create
a community that
reflects this
generation’s
community-oriented
values and beliefs.
Metropolises that wish
to attract Millennials,
will also need to
include them in their
governing institutions.
Such cities will have a
leg up on those run by
closed, good old boy
networks that don’t
reflect the tolerance
and transparency
Millennials believe in.
The passion of
Millennials for social
networking and smart
phones reflects their
need to stay in touch
with their wide circle
of friends every moment
of the day and night. In
fact, 83 percent of this
generation say that they
go to sleep with their
cell phone. This
group-oriented behavior
is reflected in the
efforts of Millennials
to find win-win
solutions to any problem
and their strong desire
to strengthen civic
institutions. Seventy
percent of college age
Millennials have
performed some sort of
community service and
virtually every member
of the generation (94%)
considers volunteer
service as an
effective way to deal
with challenges in their
local community.
The other key
characteristic of the
Millennial metropolis
will be how it carves
out a safe place for
children. The Boomer
parents of Millennials
took intense interest in
every aspect of their
children’s lives,
earning them the
sobriquet “helicopter
parents” because of
their constant hovering.
Now the
Generation X “stealth
fighter parents” of
younger Millennials are
turning the Boomer
desire to hover and talk
into a push for action
and better bottom line
results.
This can already be seen
in cities like Los
Angeles where a parent
revolution is
successfully challenging
the entrenched interests
in the Los Angeles
Unified School District
(LAUSD).
The idea began with a
website,
www.parentrevolution.org,
that offered a bargain
to parents willing to
participate in a grass
roots effort to improve
individual schools. The
organizers, led by Ben
Austin, a long time
advocate on behalf of
Los Angeles’s kids,
promised that if half of
the parents in a school
attendance district
signed an online
petition indicating
their willingness to
participate in improving
their local school, they
would “give you a great
school for your child to
attend.”
This process has worked
both in working class
areas like East Los
Angeles’ Garfield High
School and the Mark
Twain Middle School in
affluent West LA. With
the backing of the
parents, Austin went to
the Los Angeles school
district and demanded
that they either put the
management of the school
“out to bid,” or his
organization would be
forced to respond to the
parent’s demands by
starting a charter
school in competition
with the LAUSD school.
Since each child has
seven thousand dollars
of potential state
funding in their back
pack, a newly
enlightened LAUSD agreed
to these demands. When
3000 parents showed up
to demonstrate their
support of the concept,
the school district
voted 6-1 to adopt a
policy mandating
competitive bids
eventually be issued for
the management of all
250 “demonstrably
failing schools” as
defined by federal
education law.
The key to building the
Millennial metropolis
will be to accommodate
such changes. Places
like Dallas, Houston,
Austin, or
Raleigh-Durham that have
survived the Great
Recession reasonably
well now are focusing on
producing open,
accessible communities
with good schools and
safe streets. These
communities appear best
positioned to take
advantage of the next
bloom of urban growth.
Of course the ability to
provide America’s next
great generation with
good jobs and a growing
economy will also be
required if any
metropolis wants to
attract Millennials. But
with the right
leadership and a
sustained effort to
focus on the basics of
family living, almost
any city has the
opportunity to become a
leader in the rebirth of
America’s Millennial Era
metropolises.
