It wasn't driven by a Baby Boomer, but recently when the window of a Cadillac SUV came down and a voice asked me to move my Honda Fit so she could fit into a parking spot, I had to think this was the remnant of a fading world.
It's been clear for some time that Baby Boomers reaching retirement age are transforming--and will continue to transform--America's cities. Over the past decades many downtowns have been remade into more lively districts with condos for baby boomers. I remember back in graduate school when it was suggested the farthest ring of suburbs will eventually move in instead of out, to downtown, in the "donut."
And so it happened. Unable to move even farther from the city center and no longer needing more space, the movers began to populate the downtown. This is especially attractive since the aging and childless baby boomers now doing the moving don't need the big McMansions built not long ago.
A look at recent census data adds to the other side revealing that since 2000, the number of poor people in the suburbs jumped by 37.4 percent to 13.7 million. That's more than double the increase in cities, of 16.7 percent.
Bring to this discussion a recent read of mine called The Age Curve by Kenneth Gronbach, and we can get our arms around the bigger picture of how changing demographic will impact development patterns, among other things.
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