Is it really a choice if they fundamentally cannot afford to do so?
Many can and choose not too. Fuck cars.
Huh? Cars are more unattainable than ever, and third spaces are fewer than ever. Gen z has “no” money.
Don’t disagree with you but north american infrastructure is not set up for public transit
i mean, sadly
With any luck, over time, we’ll learn proper city building infrastructure from the europeans and implement it locally. Florida will probably be several feet under the ocean at that point, but hopefully when everyone relocates to higher ground we’ll build half decent cities for them to live and work in.
Hopefully.
… hopefully.
Honestly Japanese city infrastructure and planning is better than the european one, so americans should learn from Japan in that regard not europe.
- Especially integrating train stations with shopping malls.
- Make train companies real profitable by making the stations profitable by integrating them with businesses like hotel chains supermarkets and more using the location to their advantage
- Parking in your own garage or Parking House required, no curb side parking making roads smaller more unobstructed improving visibilty and safer.
Definitely agree with you there, I would also posit that everyone should be following the Japanese recycling, compost and trash models as well.
No reason why anyone is doing anything different than what the Japanese are doing in 2024.
Those scooters are pretty cool though. If you told 10 year old me there would be electric scooters just sitting around on the street in the future you could just scan and ride, I’d have called you a big fibber.
Sometimes my dog gets a surprise run, while I just get to ride a scooter.
I’m an older millennial and have never even bothered to get a driver’s license.
Ah, so it’s not just my kids (I’m Gen X). Neither has expressed any interest in driving. One’s a starving student, so I guess there’s that. But the other’s graduated and scored a cushy job where he could certainly afford wheels if he wanted. I asked him about it and he’s like nah. I’ll just take a lyft or whatever if I need it. And he’s a software dev so he spends the time on his laptop. I guess if he were driving, his time would be less productive? I dunno.
We actually went to the same tech convention last fall in Denver and shared a hotel. I knee-jerk rented a car thinking Denver sounds like a driving town. But parking at the convention was exorbitant and we wound up ride-sharing there anyway, so I am beginning to see the merit in his way of thinking? The only time we got any use out of the rental was the last day when we had a little free time before the flight and drove up to Red Rocks. But seriously, for that one trip, the rental was hardly worth it.
There’s been a big boom in interest in urbanism in recent years and increasing awareness of just how the US got so car dependent. Toss in a quick trip to Europe at some point, add in people explicitly saying “the reason you liked these old cities so much was because of transit and lack of cars”, and it’s an idea that spreads itself.
Yeah I hate urban sprawl and how the city planners where I live keep wanting to perpetuate it. I commute most days on an ebike and try to drive less. The only major exception is in my side-gig as a musician in a band. Just too much gear to carry around without 4 wheels.
Adding a trailer to your ebike let’s you have 4 wheels and the ability to carry gear without having to use a car.
I have actually thought about this. In the worst case, I would need a fairly large flatbed that could accommodate heavy bulky items like amps, PAs, and boards along with awkwardly long gear like mic stands. At least my new ebike has a fairly capable motor.
One possible advantage to biking to a gig might be that you could get closer to the venue for loading/unloading? What sucks hard is when you have no choice but to park at a lot several blocks away and haul everything over. This can be the case in old-town touristy areas with little vehicular road access.
For out-of-town gigs, we often carpool. If someone else is bringing the stage gear, I could possibly ebike with fairly minimal equipment to where they’re loading the van?
Of course if the venue has a proper stage with sound provided, much is this hassle goes away. At that point, I’d just need my instrument and a small pedal board.
Gen Z can’t afford £3k a year on insurance.
Millennials can’t afford 3k a year on insurance.
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Years ago when my Gen Z nephew was turning 16 (minimum driving age in USA), the conversation went like this:
- “Are you excited to start driving and do you want car?”
- “Nah, not interested”
- “Why not?”
- “Where would I go?”
- “Wherever you want!”
- “Everything I want is right here at home”
I thought about my own Gen X early driving experience with the freedom to go to the mall or the movie theater whenever I wanted and to drive to school or work.
- His school (and eventually job) were both within walking bicycling distance.
- He had streaming services I never dreamed of when I was his age piping a flood of big budget movies right to his TV whenever he wants
- malls are dead
I couldn’t really argue with his logic. Years later he did get a car when he moved out and lived farther away from work. However, it was many years after the minimum driving age which was a big departure from generations prior.
My son is about to turn 18 and is of much the same mind. We pushed him a bit to get his license but he rarely drives and has about zero interest in owning his own car. He just doesn’t have anywhere he needs/wants to go. I imagine it’s a little different for kids with more activities outside the home. Sports, clubs, jobs… He doesn’t have any of that going on at this point. I’m admittedly a little sad about that, but I can’t really force him to be interested.
Part of it comes down to that we killed a lot of the other places to go and do things along the way (called Third Places - not home or work, but a secret third thing). Kids don’t have malls or something to hang out at anymore. If they’re not hanging out online, then they’re probably at somebody’s house. It costs money to be anywhere else. Plus, gas and cars are expensive. So there’s no desire to just go out driving for the fun of it. Instead of being an expression of personal freedom, cars are just about getting you from point A to point B. When I turned 16 almost 20 years ago, this was how I and the older sister of a friend of mine felt, too. There was nowhere to go really in a vacation town where traffic is so bad in the summer that you don’t want to drive and everything is closed the rest of the year. So a car was just a way to get to school/work and back home again.
The whole expression of personal freedom thing feels like older people parrotting something they heard on a TV commercial. It makes sense considering that a generation or two would go television commercials were highly effective method of brainwashing and statements like that have little bearing on reality
I completely agree, as I’m pretty sure it was a line fed to Americans by the government and car companies as part of selling the suburban American Dream to them while they bulldozed entire neighborhoods to put up a highway overpass.
that makes sense. were the past couple of generations just stupid or was the media environment just so limited they had no way of knowing they were being lied to? or was it a bit of both?
Definitely the second one mixed with the specifics of the time period and the fact that nobody knew where this would lead combined with corporate greed. This was a time when we didn’t even know that putting lead in gasoline was a bad idea and having a TV in your house was a futuristic idea. Before the TV became common, they barely had a way to know what was happening across the country, and they definitely had no idea what would happen to end up where we are today.
The suburbs and cars were sold to the post WW2 American public as these symbols of the burgeoning wealth of the new middle class (plus the suburbs meant that white people didn’t have to look at black and poor people). The idea that everybody could own their own house and drive across the entire country on the newly created international highway system (just ignore all the stuff paved over to make it happen, it was mostly just poor people’s houses anyways). They were sold the dream that you didn’t have to live within walking distance of the factory anymore, you could live in a nice house with a white picket fence, and drive to your fancy office job in a skyscraper.
For me the appeal of a car was having somewhere private to do drugs, awkwardly make out with girls, and hide from my parents.
I feel like those things are somewhat timeless?
Parents force their kids to share their location, so it isn’t like the kids can hide as they used to.
I’m so glad I grew up when the internet was only used by nerds like me…
All of those things can and always have been accomplished without the use of a car.
Doesn’t mean it doesn’t make it easier, or make sure that when your friends are smoking you are there getting free hits and your gas money. Between the free beer, weed, and gas my shit box might have paid for itself.
Even as someone who didn’t try any drugs until I was 20, I fully agree with you. But also gals and bois for me.
The only reason my kids want to learn to drive is to go on road trips to visit their friends across the country. Which sounds awesome and I want to buy a couple beaters so we can do the trip together.
Obligatory fuck McKinsey.
In the article they noted this was the same for millennials and gen x before them. I’m going to assume the standard for youths purchasing cars was with the baby boomer generation. I know my dad told me when he was young, you would purchase a cool car that didn’t work for the equivalent of $100 dollars, get a friend to tow it home, then work on it for a few weeks to get it running. He told me how much he missed his MG Midget, which let’s recognize as a cool ass car for a kid to have. He could fix that car with a wrench, a stick of butter, and a deck of cars*. All his friends would be doing the same.
Nowadays it would be a $1k junker, and you’d need to have a computer science degree to fix the onboard computer while having all the specific tools to get into their proprietary parts. There are older cars too, but the standard of fixing a car has increased, all the while each generation has less time and money to do it.
- This was a typo, but I love this typo. You say deck of cards, I say deck of cars, Thank you @otp@sh.itjust.works !
_He could fix that car with a wrench, a stick of butter, and a deck of cars.
Well yeah, having a whole deck of other cars would make it pretty simple!
Millennial chiming in. Donated my car to the humane society a couple years ago. Thankfully I live close enough to walk to work, have plenty of amenities near by, and a bus line a block away when it runs. I’ve saved so much money about it. If I need a car for a couple of days I rent and it’s still less than owning. Do not regret it at all.
Every now and then I think about buying a used car and the prices are absurd on top of all the maintenance, insurance, registration.
I’m a millennial, but I fucking hate driving and gave it up a while ago. My eyesight is really bad due to misformed corneas so I have trauma from being forced to drive at a younger age. I eventually moved to a major city and got rid of my car the first chance I could (fun fact, leases are scams!). I love being able to walk/take public transit anywhere I want now, but unfortunately leaving the city is incredibly hard.
Fuck cars.
“Gen-z is choosing to be homeless.”
These crazy kids are forgoing the tradition of having a roof over ones head in favor of urban camping. It definitely has nothing to do the kleptocracy that made housing unaffordable by converting it into a speculative market for Wall Street and foreign nationals to park dirty money.
I am reading the article to say “even living out of your car is an unobtainable dream for man Gen Z.” When combined with the headline I saw recently about the return of company owned housing, the world is looking pretty bleak. We should expect unions to be making a comeback, but many seem to be brainwashed against them.
Genz can’t afford a car. Even used cars cost too damn much
Same shit as when Millennials were killing home ownership.
AFAIK similar articles (about driving less) were also penned about millennials and genxers.
And not buying diamonds.
And eating at casual dining restaurants.
Maybe they’d have money for cars and homes and diamonds if it weren’t for all that damn avocado toast!
Yeah, but then the headlines would be blaming millennials for killing the avocado market.
Is applebees dead yet or do we have to continue the war on “family restaurants”?
You must tip your microwave at home. Like the one at applebees, a microwave is a slave of the service industry that relies on panhandling your dinner table to survive.
Though I admit, part of the reason I don’t buy diamonds is specifically to fuck the diamond industry. Because fuck those scammers.
yea. it’s not entirely by choice.
Millenials can’t afford cars…
That’s the real issue. It is 100% not that they’re more environmentally cautious. Between less 16 year olds having jobs and cars and gas and insurance being so much more, less can afford a car. E bikes probably even have more to do with it than environmentalism does.
The Internet replacing the need to go places (e.g. chatting on social media vs. hanging out in a dead mall) probably helped too.
True enough. Cruisin, video gaming on split screen, and malls got replaced by social media and online gaming with voicechat.
You also have ride hail services that weren’t available a generation ago. You can get places in a car without owning a car.
Lucky to get a hand-me-down as well.
Gen z earns like $15/hr.
