Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 789

Earlier this week I wrote about the age groups that are most likely to live in an urban neighborhood in the United States. It was people in their 20s and, to a lesser extent, baby boomers. The data I was relying on used population density to measure urbanity.

Interestingly enough, the demand for co-living seems to mirror this. (Feel free to disagree.) From what I’ve been told, the fastest growing co-living segments are young people recently out of school and retirees. Intuitively this makes sense to me.

If we think back to teachings of Clayton Christensen (another recent post), we “hire” products and services because we have “jobs” that need to be done. In the case of a McDonald’s milkshake that job might be a breakfast that’s appropriate for a long and boring commute.

In the case of co-living, and in urban neighborhoods in general, one of those jobs has got to be social connections. (Again, feel free to disagree.) We do also know that single person households are increasing in many cities. Are these phenomenons related? How big could co-living get?

Note: This post was written on my phone on a flight, which is why there are no links or images.

I don't love how this WSJ article starts. It seems to place the blame on technology companies for "pumping the west coast full of choking traffic and expensive homes."

But I do really like these charts:

They show the gap between the increase in labor force and the increase in housing supply across the various cities in Silicon Valley.

The solid line is the percentage increase in labor force since 2010 and the dotted (bottom) line is the percentage increase in housing units since 2010.

The darker the color, the bigger the gap.

Many new jobs. Lots of wealth created. Not nearly enough housing. And yes, there have also been a number of negative externalities.

The full article is definitely worth a read. It's about Google's development plans for downtown San Jose.

Charts: WSJ

The North American rule of thumb is that young people -- specifically people in their 20s -- are the most likely to to live in an urban neighborhood. After that it's all down hill and, broadly speaking, the percentages decline. But at some point, much later in life, the data suggests that there is a reversal and people start to return to urban neighborhoods, albeit not to the same extent. Part of the explanation for this is that as people age they start to look to more walkable neighborhoods where they don't need to get a car to get around.

But in this recent NY Times article , Jed Kolko points out two interesting trends. One, the "urban boomer" appears to be on the decline in the US. In 1990, about 21.6% of Americans aged 54 to 72 lived in an urban neighborhood (categorized by density). As of 2018, this number had dropped to around 17.8%. And two, the age at which there is a reversal (and people start returning to denser neighborhoods) is also increasing. Perhaps because people are living longer.

Jed's conclusion: American boomers, today, are actually less urban than previous generations.

Graph: New York Times