The Suburbs Want More Young People

In the Times, Joseph Berger writes about how more young people are steering clear from the suburbs after they graduate from college and deciding to move and stay in urban cities instead. Suburban towns are trying to figure out how to get young people to come back to them:

Thomas R. Suozzi, in his unsuccessful campaign to reclaim his former position as Nassau County executive last year, held up Long Beach, Westbury and Rockville Centre as examples of municipalities that had succeeded in drawing young people with apartments, job-rich office buildings, restaurants and attractions, like Long Beach’s refurbished boardwalk. Unless downtowns become livelier, he said, the island’s “long-term sustainability” will be hurt because new businesses will not locate in places where they cannot attract young professionals.

The suburban towns face increasingly tough competition from the city. Jennifer Levi Ross grew up in Jericho on Long Island and moved into the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan a few years after graduating from college. She liked living in the city so much — the easy commuting to work, the night life, the cornucopia of things to do — that when she married another Long Islander, Michael Ross, a Syosset boy, in 2012, they decided to stay put. They say they may eventually end up in the suburbs, but they are not in a hurry.

“It’s something in the distant future,” said Ms. Ross, a 32-year-old advertising copywriter. “We want to hold out as long as possible.”

There’s another theory for why young people are not moving to the suburbs: They’re not just ready yet. Previous generations married, had children and settled down earlier in their lives (my mother had me in her early twenties), and twenty-somethings today are still navigating relationships and their careers and are not ready yet (especially in financial terms) for a house in the suburbs.

Photo: Daniel Ramirez

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