Why Millennials Are Less Urban Than You Think

Why Millennials Are Less Urban Than You Think(fivethirtyeight.com)

4 points by greedoshotlast 11 years ago | 3 comments

jseliger 11 years ago |

Millennials overall, therefore, are not increasingly living in urban neighborhoods

I've seen articles that argue this, but I think the bigger issue is that Millenials can't, because it's too expensive: http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0... and municipalities simply won't let anyone build housing that millenials can't afford.

Except... for exurbs, which don't have existing veto players. Consider: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/03/hou... :

Unlike most other big cities in America, Houston has no zoning code, so it is quick to respond to demand for housing and office space. Last year authorities in the Houston metropolitan area, with a population of 6.2m, issued permits to build 64,000 homes. The entire state of California, with a population of 39m, issued just 83,000.

People move to Houston and exurbs because they can. They don't move to say New York and San Francisco and Seattle because those cities are so expensive, regardless of other preferences.

_delirium 11 years ago | |

Having lived quite some years in Houston, I see it as just another example of the problem with NIMBYs and zoning stalling urban development, not an example of a liberalized, pro-development city, except (like in many places) in the exurbs. Houston claims to have no zoning, but that is not really true. Whether you call them "zoning" or invent a euphemism for them, there are... regulations on type of construction: minimum-setback requirements, minimum parking requirements, building-to-land ratios, traffic impact rules, etc. that make it difficult to build high-density housing in most of the city. There are the usual NIMBY problems as well. Attempting to get even just a light-rail line built has run into loads of whining and lawsuits from people who don't want it near them.

Another recent-ish factor is that Texas law and judges' insane attachment to property rights, to the extent of including various intangible property rights, has a perhaps counterintuitively anti-development impact. Neighbors can take new developments to court on the theory that the new development has damaged some of their own property's value, e.g. by producing increased traffic or blocking views (some of this originally came out of a very broad interpretation of "regulatory takings", but has extended to private litigation). For example, last year, a group of homeowners won $1.2 million from the developer of a new condo tower: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/real-estate/article...

It is, however, relatively easy to build new single-family homes in the exurbs ~20-30 miles from the city, which is what the vast majority of those 64,000 new-home permits are for. These technically count as "Houston", because Texas law is very annexation-friendly, so Houston has annexed most of its suburbs and exurbs out to a radius of ~30 miles. But that's sort-of like counting a new subdivision being built in Walnut Creek as an example of development progress in San Francisco.

greedoshotlast 11 years ago | |

"Rather, the most educated one-third of young adults are increasingly likely to live in the densest urban neighborhoods. [...] urban neighborhoods have become more desirable for those who can afford them."