Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Younger adults are moving back into the cities. Is this some great trend or just the normal reaction to childhood?

There is a big trend today: younger adults are moving from the suburbs back into the big cities. In Washington, D.C. it’s called gentrification, or is it re-gentrification, I get confused sometimes. There are big stories out of San Francisco about the young tech stars moving from gosh Silicon Valley into the hallowed old city. They can afford to do so as they ride the Google bus or the Apple bus or whatever private bus that takes them to and from work to the dismay of long-time city dweller who slug it out in traffic in their little cars.

People who laud such things are lauding these moves of the youngsters to the city. This heralds a new age of post-post-modern life (I am not sure if I put enough “posts” in front of “modern. Corrections are welcome.).

I, however, doubt the great migration is a movement. Instead, I think it is just one of those things that people do that is the opposite of what their ancestors did. Here is a secret from most of our lives:

Our adulthood is a (mostly) thoughtless reaction to our childhood.

We can claim all sorts of wonderful thoughts in hindsight, but that is hindsight and quite charitable. There is too much happening too quickly for too many of us and we are too fatigued to have a great plan for our lives.

We react to our childhood. We grew up in the suburbs so, as a reaction, we move into the city. Why not try something different? Who knows what we might learn? Our parents ate lots of read meat so, as another reaction, we eat lots of vegetable matter. The reactions go on and on. We are mostly planning to send our kids to MOOCs instead of colleges because, well, you know – another reaction.