I’m busy at the moment, but here’s a quick post this morning …

Millennials aren’t just leaving cities because they want to, argued a piece two weeks back at Grist. Planetizen sums up the piece here.

The upshot: cities need to better accommodate Millennials through transportation, education and cost of living. If they don’t, Millennials will leave because at the end of the day, they can’t afford city life.

Easier said than done.

This is more than a Millennial issue – this is a city issue … an American issue.

Those second-tier cities that are losing Millennials are doing so because they were built for the 1950s-70s. They’ve fallen behind in infrastructure and housing development, and that’s before we even mention white flight of the 1960s and 70s, which pushed money and influence to the suburbs through a modern form of racial prejudice.

In the 2010s they’re woefully behind, trying to keep up while making empty promises to a number of population groups. Millennials, especially those with money and influence, won’t stand for it and are moving out. Some are heading to smaller cities that have been able to keep up, while others are simply going to the suburbs. Affordability has a lot to do with it. But so does the evolution of the American citizen.

We all know that cities need to improve a number of things to win back Millennials, but most of these cities lost their way far before Millennials were an important population group.