Everyone wants to live downtown -- just like me

Alan Ehrenhalt cites (Governing March 2009) a poll by Lesser & Co.: 80 million Americans were born since 1980; 77% of these millennials want to live in the urban core. There are 65 million baby boomers, of whom 71% say walking to work is their most important criterion in choosing a home. Ehrenhalt's response to this demand is to "urbanize suburbia," because building all the houses downtown would take just too many skyscrapers. Blurring the lines of city and suburbs recalls Breugmann's book, Sprawl: There is no longer a clear distinction at the city line, or at least between city and near-in suburbs. One of Breugmann's counterintuitive conclusions is that Los Angeles is the densest city in the country. While NYC is denser downtown, NYC is sparse in the suburbs; LA is consistently across the metro area.