Many cities like Boston, NY and SF are trying to add affordable housing but that seems to be either a few units for very low income people or micro-units that are just a couple hundred square feet. Unless you make a huge amount of money I think most families get pushed to the suburbs to try to find somewhere they can afford to live.

I'd like to see better designed suburbs that combine dense larger housing with public transit to connect the suburb communities with each other and the city they encircle. We need a size of home between the micro-apartment and the 2 million dollar mini mansion.

I'd love to be able to take public transit into Boston from my place in the suburbs but train stations only have a few dozen parking spots and the bus service is limited to the city areas. So I drive for now.

This is a good point. Even if we increase public transit, almost all of these plans only improve connectivity between the suburb and downtown. When you need to get from one suburb to another to see a friend from work or school, that can take hours, even if both families are close to transit. Increased options between suburbs is important too.

This, however, is primarily a policy choice: http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0... .

I'd like to see better designed suburbs that combine dense larger housing with public transit to connect the suburb communities with each other and the city they encircle

Me too. But suburbs have all the political veto problems described at the link above, but worse.

The bigger problem is schools. Big city public school districts are a total disaster. Though not for any inherent fact of geography, just politics and demographics.

I've done it many times when travelling in Europe (though with one baby). Unless the stroller is overloaded, you can kinda fold it up awkwardly in the event that the carriage is quite full.

I've taken full luggage, a stroller and a baby on the Paris metro in peak hour. Never again!

One issue I rarely see addressed in these articles is how difficult we've made it to get a driver's license in the US. I started driving when I was 14 (rural midwest roads) and got a license within a month of turning 16. In contrast my cousins (early millenials or very late GenX) couldn't even get permits until they were 15 1/2 and had to drive for nearly 2 years under adult supervision before they could get a license. That has to have some sort of negative impact on the interest or desire to drive.

This is happening to the degree that preschool admissions are now hypercompetitive because so many upper middle class parents want to give their kids the best possible chance to get into a magnet or private elementary school so they can go to a good high school and get into an Ivy League college.

I wonder if part of the reason this is happening is that kids in the suburbs are now allowed to roam and play unsupervised so much less than our generation was that it doesn't seem to make a difference whether they're in the city or the suburbs since they're going to be indoors most of the time anyway. If you're going to supervise all their outdoor time anyway, might as well just take them to the park.

Besides, you can argue that for younger teens the city is much better than the suburbs. Instead of those too young to drive themselves hanging around in bunches and making trouble out of sheer boredom, those groups walk around the (actually interesting) neighborhood, go to the park, take themselves to a movie or poke around in their favorite stores. They can get to their friends' houses without having to pester their parents for a lift, and they don't put themselves at risk getting in a car with a 16-y/o driver and multiple rowdy passengers.

The outer suburbs are pretty much the same: the supposed bucolic safety of the cul-de-sac becomes a deathtrap if you move onto the arterial roads. I've seen plenty of fourteen-year-olds riding dirt bikes without lights on high-speed roads feeding onto the interstate, because how else are they supposed to get anywhere interesting?

to getting one in Ireland in 2014 (12 hours of instruction required regardless of your age, must have had a permit (or foreign license) for at least 6 months, and a test with a 40% pass rate where you have to bring a standard transmission vehicle if you want to drive stick legally).

Even after 13 years of driving, those 12 hours of training were actually pretty helpful. Not just for cleaning up bad habits, but for techniques I'd never properly learned in CA, like stick shift starts up steep hills with a stiff clutch. My city driving has improved as well.

If you can't drive or your driving is restricted as a matter of law, would you rather be stuck in suburbia or in a more urban area where mass–transit or cycling is possible?

Certainly a generation living like man-children for the entirety of our 20s before starting a family will have lasting impacts on our outlook, but I predict that in 5 years we see most millennials transitioning into being the suburban boomers they all hate.

I'm 31, right on the leading edge of millennials and I have been seeing it among people my age for several years now (partially because of the coincidence with economic recovery).

also consider that it might not be such a great thing for a parent to become a glorified chauffeur for their children. something is out of balance with the suburban lifestyle. there is an awful lot of driving around, with your kids in the backseat, in a big hurry to get to the next place to spend money on some junk for your kid.

It's not always some place to spend money. It can be the park that you're meeting your kid's best friend at, or the natural history museum you go to every day after school, or just your friend's house or the field that your soccer practice meets at. Sure, you can stay in the area within a few miles of your home/school and get around exclusively by bike or walking, but lots of kids and parents want more than that.

In the rare cases when I absolutely need a car, I rent one.

P.S.: I live in Europe.

We're not big cell-phone people either, I just hate being locked in a mobile refrigerator for hours. Not to mention that not having a car (or a second car) is just money in the pocket. We cycle instead, or carpool, use the bus. The bus is not a great option in a mid-sized city, but cycling is fine in inner-ring suburbs and downtown.