Agreed, good thread.

I don’t think they are going away. People and places change over time, that never stops happening no matter how much old folks don’t want it to.

The city dwelling segment of the financially successful career-oriented educated youth today just has different goals than past generations. Traveling is more important to some than having kids. It’s a lot easier to head over to Europe for a couple weeks when you don’t have grass to mow or kids to get to school. Lock the apartment door and get gone. Spending an hour and a half a day commuting in anything looks unattractive to them. A waste of valuable leisure time. What’s close to work is Important. Now that they are here, they create a whole other micro-economy in the services they require. Bars, restraunts, shops with their casual clothes with designer labels. Even their comic book store.

As for midtown, you have Wayne State building dorms as fast as they can. It’s not just a commuter school anymore. More recently it has become a resident university in its own college town that is still growing and filling with things college kids enjoy after hours. Some will stay, some will move on. What is different is when it was primarily a commuter school, everyone left.

Some will still head off to the burbs for sure at some point to settle down more, but not all like in past generations. And for the ones that do, there will be plenty that will take their place.