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Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

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Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#71

Post by noonespecial »

gradstudent wrote: post #62
learc83 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's also the time and cost to run, park, insure, maintain, etc. Driverless cars won't help most of this. Driverless cars will help almost all of those. Think how much more viable zip cars would become if you didn't have to get to the car in the first place. If you could just call a car with a smartphone app and it would show up. Parking is a non issue because it drops you off at the door, and it can go park whereve…

>Driverless cars will help almost all of those. Think how much more viable zip cars would become if you didn't have to get to the car in the first place. If you could just call a car with a smartphone app and it would show up. Congratulations: You've just described taxi cabs.

Taxis are expensive and severely supply side limited. Interesting things happen when things that were previously limited become much less so. People had "internet" when they dialed it at 56kbits, but things like youtube were impossible. I'd guess that self driving zip-cars would be at least as big a paradigm shift.

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#72

Post by [deleted] »

lcargill99 wrote: post #41

I have two Gen Y daughters. My general impression is that Gen Y is not analyze-eable as the Baby Boom was. I attribute this to the end of monoculture, but that's probably a bias. I have no idea why anybody who is not in finance would care to live in NYC. That's a late-boomer bias, probably caused by watching Barney Miller.

[deleted]

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#73

Post by saryant »

hieronymusN wrote: post #30
scarmig wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's... very weird and surprising. NYC grew by low single digits, while SF did a bit more. I incorrectly assumed this was shared across most major cities. I'm not sure how that affects my prediction, one way or another. Edited to add: a table with actual data. The 2000s have not been kind to most cities. By comparison, the USA as a whole grew 9.7% from 2000 to 2010. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-0…

The Houston Metro area grew 26.1% from 2000 - 2010 , http://www.houston.org/pdf/research/09AW010.pdf [PDF] so yes, not all cities grow along the same lines.

A lot of that includes suburbs of Houston though. Fort Bend County largely consists of Katy and Sugar Land, two major suburbs. Harris is mostly Houston though much of it doesn't really qualify as urban.

A lot of the oil companies are starting to move out of downtown. Exxon as always been up in The Woodlands, ConocoPhilips is out at Highway 6 and I-10. Shell is moving a lot of people out to their west Houston facility and BP recently opened a huge new expansion to their campus in the same area.

Now, urban Houston, which I would say is anything inside the 610 loop, still grew by a large percent though I'm not exactly sure what that is.

I'd also argue that there's never been a better time to live in Houston. Growing tech sector, amazing healthcare sector with some of the best hospitals and research institutions in the world. Also a food scene which is possibly the most interesting and innovative in the nation right now.

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#74

Post by [deleted] »

learc83 wrote: post #5

There's plenty of truth in that article, but I can't help but think that this trend is almost purely a product of demographic changes. People wait longer to get married and have children, so there way more 25-30 year olds who worry more about living within walking distance to a bar and less about a backyard and a nice school. Many of the urban Gen Y the article talks about will move back to the suburbs when they have…

[deleted]

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#75

Post by [deleted] »

learc83 wrote: post #5

There's plenty of truth in that article, but I can't help but think that this trend is almost purely a product of demographic changes. People wait longer to get married and have children, so there way more 25-30 year olds who worry more about living within walking distance to a bar and less about a backyard and a nice school. Many of the urban Gen Y the article talks about will move back to the suburbs when they have…

[deleted]

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#76

Post by saryant »

hieronymusN wrote: post #39
saryant wrote: post #4

I absolutely fall into this category. Grew up in suburbs of LA, San Francisco, Houston and the outskirts of Cheyenne, WY. Now I'm about to move into the Montrose area of Houston. I hate driving and now I'll be taking metro rail to downtown and I'll be close to great restaurants, grocery stores and cafes. Even if I do need to drive, I'll be smack in the middle of what I consider the "good" parts of Houston so I won't…

As a former Houstonian (and Montrose denizen), the one problem here is that there is a very good chance your job will not be in Lower Westheimer or Downtown. Which means you could very well be spending an hour on I-10 headed out to the energy corridor to work for one of the Big Oil companies. Houston is a great 'secret city' that few know about, but the effects of its lack of public transport (insane traffic on the f…

> As a former Houstonian (and Montrose denizen), the one problem here is that there is a very good chance your job will not be in Lower Westheimer or Downtown. Which means you could very well be spending an hour on I-10 headed out to the energy corridor to work for one of the Big Oil companies.

Absolutely. Fortunately my new employer is in the middle of downtown but the fact that the big employers in Houston are leaving the 610 loop does skew the population distribution.

I've read elsewhere that the statistical center of the Houston region by population is almost at Highway 6 and I-10 now, largely due to growth in Katy.

Given that Katy ISD is opening five new high schools in the next few years at 3.5k students each, it's not really surprising.

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#77

Post by chrischen »

learc83 wrote: post #21
scarmig wrote: post #11

I'm sympathetic to the viewpoint that it's important to watch cities as central to our future. This article, however, relies a bit much on psychological gobbledygook. Helicopter parents, Friends , the Google bus... Even the one graph they provide is more or less incomprehensible. What would be useful to see is land prices in inner urban areas, average lived population density, and comparative migration patterns for y…

I thought the section on TV shows was nonsense as well. He cherry picked a few examples that fit his model. Off the top of my head some modern comedies that don't fit are Modern Family, Parks and Recreation, and Desperate Housewives. There were plenty of classic shows set in the city as well. Mary Tyler Moore, The Jeffersons, The Bob Newhart Show, Three's Company, Taxi, Welcome Back Kotter.

Not to mention at the end of the series Chandler and Monica move out to the 'burbs to raise a family.

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#78

Post by drusenko »

_delirium wrote: post #59
learc83 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but I don't see the "rise" coming any time soon. Nevada already implemented regulations to allow companies to test drive self driving cars on its roads, and all it will take for the rest of the nation to follow is for Google get California on board. The technology is already here. It's all about regulation and politics now, and there is so much money to made that it's just a question of when not if. If I can't buy a…

I've only seen tests on highways; afaik Google's car can't yet technologically manage the process of showing up to a random spot you want it to. For example, it can drive on 280, but it can't exit 280 into SF, navigate surface streets, and pull up to the curb where you're waiting.

I don't think that's true. See this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?page...):

----------

During a half-hour drive beginning on Google’s campus 35 miles south of San Francisco last Wednesday, a Prius equipped with a variety of sensors and following a route programmed into the GPS navigation system nimbly accelerated in the entrance lane and merged into fast-moving traffic on Highway 101, the freeway through Silicon Valley.

It drove at the speed limit, which it knew because the limit for every road is included in its database, and left the freeway several exits later. The device atop the car produced a detailed map of the environment.

The car then drove in city traffic through Mountain View, stopping for lights and stop signs, as well as making announcements like “approaching a crosswalk” (to warn the human at the wheel) or “turn ahead” in a pleasant female voice. This same pleasant voice would, engineers said, alert the driver if a master control system detected anything amiss with the various sensors.

The car can be programmed for different driving personalities — from cautious, in which it is more likely to yield to another car, to aggressive, where it is more likely to go first.

----------

Also, the Wikipedia page indicates the same: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#79

Post by Lewisham »

_delirium wrote: post #59
learc83 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but I don't see the "rise" coming any time soon. Nevada already implemented regulations to allow companies to test drive self driving cars on its roads, and all it will take for the rest of the nation to follow is for Google get California on board. The technology is already here. It's all about regulation and politics now, and there is so much money to made that it's just a question of when not if. If I can't buy a…

I've only seen tests on highways; afaik Google's car can't yet technologically manage the process of showing up to a random spot you want it to. For example, it can drive on 280, but it can't exit 280 into SF, navigate surface streets, and pull up to the curb where you're waiting.

I've seen it, it can do this. I've seen it first-hand navigate it's way around the Google campus, go into a left turn lane, turn left into one of the Google buildings. The entrance has a prominent bump, and the car slowed down so as not to hit it hard.

Of course, it may have been pre-programmed, but I don't believe so. What I don't think it can yet do is navigate arbitrary systems like drive-thrus.

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#80

Post by sliverstorm »

nitrogen wrote: post #63
sliverstorm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Improving traffic flow is a win, but only a small win. Lugging around the mass of the car and yourself is still by far and away the biggest energy cost of operating a car, not sitting at a stoplight or getting stuck in stop-and-go. Clearing up 1 mile of stop-and-go is not going to make up for the 9 miles from your house to the city streets on your 10-mile commute.

But most of a car's energy is spent accelerating, with the rest spent fighting wind resistance. Improved traffic flow helps with both -- no stop and go means no energy wasted to braking, and automated car trains will allow cars to take turns drafting off one another for a significant reduction in drag. Notice that cars have markedly different highway vs. city mileage ratings. The old BMW I used to drive would get bet…

On a freeway drive, I assure you, energy spent maintaining speed is the primary investment by great lengths.

This is an over-generalization. Yes, city mileage is generally lower than highway, and yes, it is because of stop-and-go. But markedly different? My old car got 32 freeway, 29 city. My current car gets 27 freeway, 25 city. Cars with a large difference, like your BMW, suffer either from poor aerodynamics or engine configuration. (That is to say, the particular engine setup operates very inefficiently when accelerating from a stop) Now, the most damning evidence of all- the Prius gets 40 freeway, 44 city.

Automating drafting is an interesting suggestion, but anecdotal evidence from hypermilers suggests that even when drafting close behind a big-rig, you typically only net a few percent. In addition, to get any kind of measurable improvements from drafting behind a regular car, you'd basically have to ride their bumper. It seems unlikely we will permit computers to try this any time soon.

In the end, my point is not that improved traffic flow is worthless- it is a win in nearly every aspect- but that it is a small, incremental win. It is not going to reduce our energy consumption enough as to obviate our dependence on cheap energy, which ties back in to the earlier point this discussion spawned from:

Suburbs are built on the principle that energy is cheap. That is no longer the case.

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