In what one Brookings Institution fellow describes as the “beginning of the end of sprawl,” a trend is emerging — particularly among boomers and millennials (born between the late ‘70s and mid-90s) — a demand for higher density urban housing in pedestrian-friendly communities close to public transportation.

With transportation as the second biggest household expense after housing, more people are recognizing that it pays to live in the city, close to mass transit and the amenities an urban center can offer. As a Wall Street Journal article yesterday notes, with more than 30 U.S. cities that have or are developing commuter-rail systems, it is likely that demand for mixed-use, mixed-income projects will increase — a step in the direction of creating more walkable, healthy communities.

In recent years, a generation of young people, called the millennials, born between the late 1970s and mid-1990s, has combined with baby boomers to rekindle demand for urban living. Today, the subprime-mortgage crisis and $4-a-gallon gasoline are delivering further gut punches by blighting remote subdivisions nationwide and rendering long commutes untenable for middle-class Americans.

Just as low interest rates and aggressive mortgage financing accelerated expansion of the suburban fringe to the point of oversupply, “the spike in gasoline prices, layered with demographic changes, may accelerate the trend toward closer-in living,” said Arthur C. Nelson, director of Virginia Tech’s Metropolitan Institute in Alexandria, Va. “All these things are piling up, and there are fundamental changes occurring in demand for housing in most parts of the country.”

On a personal level, as a mom raising two young children in the city (and using one car for a family of four), I can’t imagine living in a place without access to all that Oakland has to offer — not to mention a 15 minute doorstep-to-office train commute to work.

Photo of Jack London Square in Oakland by Flickr user Michael Patrick, used under a Creative Commons license.

Tags: boomers, infrastructure, millenials, planning, public transit, smart growth, sprawl, transit-oriented development, urbanization

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