It is a certain truism of Boston-area real estate that young people really dig living here, the apocalyptic winters and aching public-transit system notwithstanding. Or at least that's the long-term hope. Everything from the tech and biotech industries that animate much of the economy to the sputtering phenomenon that are micro-apartments to the very notion of how and what to build in the region hinges in no small part on how many young folk are here and where they want to be once they arrive.
The above map comes courtesy of urban-planning researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada. They are studying where those born between 1980 and 2000 are choosing to live (for better or worse, we call those people Millennials, though the sample probably includes Generation X-ers, too). Boston is, naturally, one of the 57 metro areas in the United States and Canada that they are tracking.
As you can see, those residents 25 to 34 years old are clustering in places such as the Seaport, Eastie, the South End and Cambridge. (The darker the red on the map, the greater the concentration of younger people.) Surprisingly enough, Boston is not among the top 10 cities with the greatest share of young adults (see the chart below). Perhaps that's because the study's "preliminary results suggest that the metropolitan areas with the highest shares of young adults are also those where young adults are most centralized, and where the Baby Boomers are more suburbanized." As we all know, the Baby Boomers in Boston love themselves some downtown real estate and the young people are everywhere.
· Where Do Young Adults Live? [Generationed City]
· Somerville to Board Tech Train as Mayor Praises 'Hipsters' [Curbed Boston]
· Boston Micro-Apartments Are Real Estate Vampires [Curbed Boston]
· 1350 Boylston and the Battle for Building Boston [Curbed Boston]
· Downtown Boston Is Just One Big Empty Nest [Curbed Boston]
· Brooklyn Opens Branch Office in Somerville [Curbed Boston]
· Our Fun With Cartography archive [Curbed Boston]
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