A New Nation Demanded by a Generation?

News flash: Generation Yers don't want what has generally passed for the American Dream since the 1920s. So says a reporter from the bastion of conservative printed news, the Wall Street Journal (a Murdock media outlet, if you weren't aware).

This article, based on a study by the National Association of Home Builders, is hopeful in some ways and kind of disturbing in others. On the up-side, it says what everyone already knows: the children of Baby Boomers, who actually outnumber their parents (why does no one talk about this???), do not want any part of a car-dependent lifestyle. Developers have known this for a while now, which has spurred them to start building condos and other housing closer to walkable commercial centers. The New Urbanists, for many reasons outside of the preferences of the silent majority generation, have begun developing entire traditional neighborhoods consisting of not just housing, but commercial and civic centers. Recently, car companies began to catch on to this trend, too, as they expressed worry over whether Gen Yers would actually buy their products. I happen to think we will continue to buy cars, especially when they transition from gasoline usage, just not in the insane, almost addictive levels that previous generations have. Much fewer than the majority of families living in neighborhoods with full amenities within walking distance, including good transit, will need more than one (and definitely not more than two) cars. Maybe to survive GM and Ford will have to return to the public transit business that they killed in the first half of the 20th Century.

I also like that developers are starting to nix home designs that include huge master bathtubs (can save a surprising amount of square footage there), more than one living room, and, if there are fewer cars, garages. What I was disappointed to learn about... though I'm not especially surprised... was the continual focus on designing the social areas of the house around the TV. Look, I've watched my fair share of TV in my lifetime (though not much recently), and I don't have a problem with the existence of TV or video games; but the whole culture of it has become ridiculous. Do we really have nothing better to do with our lives? If not, then maybe we should question what kind of story we're writing for ourselves (to borrow a concept from Donald Miller). I'm a big proponent of community-building and encouraging social interaction between people. Sorry, but TV and video games produce the opposite of these qualities.

But, I guess it's better to watch a lot of TV in a vital, mixed-use community where venturing out into the public realm (not surrounded by a ton of steel and glass) is more common than vegging in front of the tube in the burbs, where it's probably the most exciting thing you would have to do anyway. Oh, and by the way, if you think it is only the Gen Yers that want the walkable, functional, and social communities (if not in an urban environment, then at least in a suburb that is economically self-sustaining), then you are wrong by a mile. My own graduate research showed that as much as 90% of people (young and old, urbanite and suburbanite, rich and poor) prefer to live in these types of walkable communities. At the moment, most of what is offered is car paradise... but it looks like some much needed change is on the way.