Abandoning grueling freeway commutes and the ennui of San Fernando Valley suburbs, Mike Boseman recently found residential refuge in this Southern California city. His apartment building straddles a light-rail line, which the 25-year-old insurance broker rides to and from work in Los Angeles.
Richard Wells is more than a generation older but was similarly attracted to the Pasadena apartment building. The British-born scientist retains what he calls a European preference for public transportation despite his nearly 30 years in California. Plus, he said, the building’s location means, “I can walk to a hundred restaurants, the Pasadena symphony and movie theaters.”
Messrs. Boseman and Wells embody trends that are dovetailing to potentially reshape a half-century-long pattern of how and where Americans live: The driveable suburb — that bedrock of post-World War II society — is for many a mile too far.
In recent years, a generation of young people, called the millennials, born between the late 1970s and mid-1990s, has combined with baby boomers to rekindle demand for urban living. Today, the subprime-mortgage crisis and $4-a-gallon gasoline are delivering further gut punches by blighting remote subdivisions nationwide and rendering long commutes untenable for middle-class Americans.
This article highlights a benefit of the high price of gas. As I have posted about before, I live in a virtual “Grover’s Corners, USA”, a moderately sized (21,000) town in the midwest, and I love the lifestyle…everything I need, and almost every I want, can be obtained within a walk, or at most a short bicycle ride. The only thing lacking, and typical for small towns and rural areas…healthcare is a problem. Within five miles, I have access to primary care doctors and a reasonably well-equipped general hospital, but subspecialty care and access to tertiary-level hospitals requires a thirty mile drive to St. Louis–and I am lucky to be that close. The next hospital east of our general hospital is another forty file miles away, and that is little more than an infirmary, although it is well-staffed and equipped for what it is.
I’m a little older than a millenial (34, the oldest millenial can’t really be more than 28 or 30…)
But I love the city. Schools are the achilles heel in re-urbanization, especially out east. Fix that problem, and you may actually keep us here.
I say that as a teacher who commutes to the suburbs to teach. 😉
Randall
Sorry, but my wife and I had enough of city living, and now that we’re retire, we like small town life, thank you very much! We have a lake close by, we’re 60 miles from Yosemite National Park, and about the same distance from Monterey with all of its attractions. We have a fine 125 bed hospital (part of the Sutter Medical Group) in town, good dental care, new businesses, and everything good here. Why on Earth would we want to live like bees in a hive?
“Why on Earth would we want to live like bees in a hive?”
You don’t have to. But those of us who work in the hive might find living there convenient.
I live in NYC and do not own a car. There is a great sense of freedom in not having to always take care a car and fill it with gas. All of the walking is also healthy for you. It’s too bad that no other American city has the transit networks that NYC does because I really think more Americans would come to appreciate a public transportation lifestyle if given the opportunity.
#3, you presumably don’t have a commute of any length so the impetus for you to move is lessened. the article is about people living outside large urban areas and moving back to them to shorten their commute and/or get out of their cars. In Los Banos (perhaps where you live?) for instance, there certainly are people who commute all the way to San Jose for work. but with gas where it is, I think that is on the wane.
Can’t stand city living. I stayed in Chicago for a month working with Jesus People, USA. while I loved living in the community, and taking advantage of the transit system, everything else about it was uncomfortable.
Where I live now is considered a ‘city’ by Southern standards, everywhere else it would be a large town! And it is as big a ‘city’ as I want to live in. I long to move to a small mountain area, simplify my lifestyle, etc. …. but that’s a different post.
Currently I drive 22 miles to work (and 22 back), averaging about a 1/2 to 3/4 tank of gas a week (23mpg, so two gallons a day), which I consider pretty good. We are staying where we are because quite frankly, the schools are not as good in the county where I work.
#7 reveals why the groups doing the back to city moving (Boomers and Millenials) can do so: they don’t have school age children. The urban schools, by and large, are not very good. And private schools, combined with expensive urban housing, is a no go for most of us.
Isn’t that why everyone is out in Summerville, Kendall? They are building and building (www.discovertheponds.com)…..
Rural and semi-rural areas such ours are not conducive to building mass transit systems because of the distances involved…..35 miles to and from Merced, for instance……and the fact that counties such as ours are some of the poorer in the state. One of the problems is the chronic lack of water here, and insufficient storage capacity is one of the reasons.
If you’re going to build here, where is the water going to come from? Insufficient water supply, coupled with an inadequate mass transportation system = no new construction = no new companies in the area = no new jobs = long commutes to San Jose or Fresno.
Incentives? We’re working on them.