WHY MILLENNIALS ARE AVOIDING SMALL-TOWN AMERICA [View all]

[pstokely]

http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/why-millennials-are-avoiding-small-town-america/34058

The kids aren’t just flocking to the city proper, either, but to the metropolis writ large, including the fancier suburbs. The top destination for millennials is the D.C. suburb of Arlington, Virginia, where their ranks grew by a staggering 82 percent between 2007 and 2013. Arlington’s median home sale price is $557,250, and in just 10 of the 290 Arlington apartments listed on Zillow could you live alone for less than $1,200 a month; a couple of them might even give you more than 600 square feet to knock around in.

An enterprising millennial with a flexible employer might hop across the Chesapeake Bay to the historic district of Cambridge, Maryland (pop. 12,690), with a porch overlooking the Choptank River. With a thriving downtown and arts district, Cambridge was No. 10 on Livability’s list of Best Small Towns in 2013. Homes go for $164,154 , and a monthly $1,200 rental will get you a detached house or a 1,600-square-foot townhouse.

But affordable real estate and waterfront views don’t have millennials biting. They “continue a multigenerational pattern of young adults preferring more expensive urban areas over lower-cost rural ones because the lifestyles and opportunities in such places make the extra burden of cost worth it,” says Robert Lang, professor of urban growth and population dynamics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Which is to say: Getting to a big city — or at least near one — still has the smell of success. “We don’t all hail from small Midwestern towns, but most came from places where they felt limited — small town Maine, suburban west Texas, California’s Central Valley and the Inland Empire,” wrote 20-something Brittany Shoot of her friends and neighbors in the San Francisco Bay Area. “It’s easy to find people who will sneeringly complain about how trapped they felt as teenagers.”