Is Your Neighborhood Changing? It Might Be Youthification, Not Gentrification

Much has been made of the wave of millennials moving to cities. In intriguing new work, geographer and urban planner Markus Moos of the University of Waterloo gives the phenomenon a name: “youthification.” Moos defines youthfication as the “influx of young adults into higher density” cities and neighborhoods. And in some ways these neighborhoods are “forever young,” where new cohorts of young people continue to move in as families and children cycle out in search of more space.

Moos takes care to distinguish youthification from the broader process—and less precise construct—of gentrification. “The youthification process differs from gentrification—an increase in social status of a neighborhood—in that the former is not as explicitly a class-based process, although the two are not mutually exclusive,” he writes. “Gentrification, when viewed as a series of stages involving ever slightly wealthier but more risk averse in-movers, arguably has set the stage for a broader segment of the population. “