TREND REVERSAL: Young Americans Are Choosing Suburbs Over Cities

Despite frequent media reports and city planners’ hopes to the contrary, “white flight” is stronger than ever, data from last year’s census show.

The 2000 census showing an explosion of 25-34 year-olds living in inner cities was cited by urban planners and demographers as evidence that American youth were reversing their parents’ movements and were moving back to the city. But the newer data shows that this trend has now reversed itself: this generation, now ten years older, has moved back to the suburbs to settle down.

In the last ten years, this group’s presence grew 12% in the suburbs and shrunk by 22.7% in “historic core cities,” like New York and San Francisco, according to Joel Kotkin at Forbes.

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