Millennials Love Philly—But Not Enough to Stay

The Inquirer says that Philadelphia’s much-heralded millennial revolution is just a mirage.

Yes, the age group 20-34 accounts for a quarter of the city’s population, but half of those kids are going to up and move out the city when the kids come. There they will pine for the city and the artistic life, like some 21st century version of Revolutionary Road, until tragedy born of ennui shatters their lives.

Or so we assume.

Inky points to a new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts to make the case:

The surge from 2006 through 2012, primarily in neighborhoods surrounding Center City, has helped reverse population decline and lifted the percentage of Philadelphia’s young adults into line with New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, according to Millennials in Philadelphia, by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The findings reflect a “promising but fragile boom,” Pew cautioned, because half of these young adults said they would likely move out of the city in five to 10 years in search of better schools and stronger career prospects elsewhere.

“Only 36 percent of millennials said they would recommend the city as a place to raise children, while 56 percent would not,” wrote the report’s author, Larry Eichel, project director of Pew’s Philadelphia Research Initiative. “With many young adults starting to raise families or thinking about doing so, this view is not a positive sign.”

All those books from the last few years about how surburbia is dying? They lied to us.