'Peak Millennial' Has Passed: What Comes Next for Cities and Suburbs?

The largest cohort of Millennials (those born in 1990) recently turned 25, leaving only smaller waves of their generational peers to follow. Are economic and generational trends primed for another, suburban shift?

1 minute read

February 23, 2016, 2:00 PM PST

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Millennial Crowd

Jared Eberhardt / Flickr

"A prominent demographer says that country has officially reached 'peak Millennial,'" according to an article by Ryan Holeywell.

That prominent demographer is Dowell Myers, who is getting the word out that the largest cohort of Millennials, those born in 1990, turned 25 in 2015. "That number matters: around age 25 is when young people start to get more serious about their careers, their housing, and their future," explains Holeywell.

Now that that cohort has hit that benchmark, in every year from now on "we’ll see a smaller and smaller number of Americans from the Millennial generation come of age — ergo, we’ve hit 'peak Millennial.'"

Once the new world order is rapidly becoming the mature world order, the question becomes whether the largest generation ever will move on from its preference for urban living. According to the article, Myers is of the camp that believes that Millennials will follow the generations that came before them into the suburbs once they can—and that will have a fresh round of implications both for cities and for suburbs.

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