New Geography

Author: Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais

  • Obama’s Marketing Message

    By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais

    In less than two weeks, when Barack Obama’s lead in all the polls is likely to be confirmed in the voting booth by the American electorate, millions of words will be written about why he won and how John McCain managed to lose. Unfortunately, marketing executives and corporate leaders have ignored some of the most important lessons from the campaign.

    Obama’s success to date lies in his ability to blend his own persona as a messenger with a unifying and uplifting message that reaches the newest generation of Americans, Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003. His campaign has mastered marketing through social networks and other Internet-based communication technologies. This “cool” approach defeated the “hot” rhetoric that came from his primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, and is likely to perform even more favorably against the more confrontational and traditional campaign of John McCain.

    But Millennials don’t just represent the key constituency behind Senator Obama’s successful campaign but also a key market opportunity for economic growth. Almost one-third of all Americans are in this generational cohort, and even though many of them are still too young to vote, almost all of them influence the daily purchases of the families of which they are a part. Until brand managers and marketing mavens master the art of reaching and attracting Millennials, consumer expenditures will continue to languish.

    CEOs need to learn how to create brands that attract Millennials with something more transcendent than their product’s functionality or characteristics. Corporations will only hit their growth targets if they are willing to change their own message, messenger and media to fit the tastes of this generation.

    A recent study by The Economist magazine’s Intelligence Unit suggests this campaign lesson has not yet penetrated the thinking of many in the “C suites” of the world’s corporations. More than half of those executives said they did not currently have a strategy to target or retain this demographic group. In their report, “Maturing with the Millenials”, survey respondents acknowledged the need for new tactics to target the millennial customer, but indicated a lack of readiness to do so.

    For instance, the report found that, “While 44% indicate that communicating the right messages in the right medium and at the right time is critical to their success, the majority have yet to leverage enriched content, peer recommendations and enhanced online experiences as part of their outreach—even though they acknowledge these are among the most effective ways to communicate with Millennials.” This sounds a lot like Hillary Clinton’s advisors Mark Penn and Mandy Grunwald on the eve of the Iowa caucuses when they derided the supporters of Obama as looking “like Facebook” pages. When Obama’s Facebook legions came out to vote in droves in the Iowa caucuses they dealt a fatal blow to Senator Clinton’s cause.

    Companies, fortunately, do not have to suffer the short shelf life of failed candidates. They can change their strategies in order to capture an emerging new base. We have seen this with companies that have succeeded with emerging ethnic markets at home and with whole new markets abroad.

    Even though most executives surveyed by The Economist understood that Millennials have specific consumer needs, few have tailored their marketing strategy for this generation. Four out of 10 executives in the Economist’s survey said that Web 2.0 technologies, such as webcasts and online forums, are the best way to serve Millennial customers. More than 80 percent agreed that consumer needs vary by age group, and 42 percent believed that a bigger share of investment should go towards Millennial customers. Yet remarkably, the respondents reported that telephone, e-mail and physical storefronts were the top three ways that Millennials could interact with their company currently.

    The risks companies are taking by not addressing Millennials are great. John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer for Young & Rubicam, details this argument in a new book, The Brand Bubble. His research shows that consumers’ trust in brands has declined by half in just ten years. Instead consumers increasingly turn to nontraditional sources of information, such as search engines and social networks, to determine what they should buy and from whom. That is why any good corporate CEO should check every day what customers are saying about their company on the mushrooming “Why I hate xx” websites that now exist for every major company.

    To restore their brand’s value and regain traction with the buying public, companies will need to reinvent themselves in order to engage Millennial constituencies on Millennial terms and in Millennial media. They will need to learn the art of attracting support from Millennials without appearing to be chasing after it in much the same way Obama did in his campaign.

    One leading-edge private sector example of how to pull off this Zen-like non-effort is Nike’s successful efforts to enhance its brand’s attractiveness by creating online communities of runners. By partnering with Apple it created an application for runners that transfers running time, distance and even calories burned to a Nano so that the results can be uploaded for sharing with others. By building virtual running communities, Nike gave its customers an opportunity to register their individual profiles while receiving content that they can access while running. Nike was able to create its own social network linking people with similar running habits, such as those who run with poodles, to produce a strong bond of affiliation among each member of the group, and from that experience an equally strong sense of loyalty to the Nike brand.

    In 2006, the International Television and Video Almanac pointed out that Americans were being bombarded with about “5,000 marketing messages each day, up from 3000 in 1990 and 1500 in 1960.” Nothing in the trend line for communication technologies suggests this amount of corporate generated content is likely to decrease in the coming decades. Not surprisingly, Millennials can absorb much more information at any single moment than previous generations. But this does NOT mean that they are absorbing information in the same way. To gain the attention and brand loyalty of Millennials, companies will have to turn to non-traditional, online information distribution platforms to create a new message that builds a sense of community and caring around their products.

    The best way to do that is to incorporate a cause or purpose into the reason for buying a product. It may be protecting the environment by going green, or reducing inequality in the world through acts of charity, or demonstrating a commitment to young people by investing in educational institutions, or all of the above. Regardless of the cause, not only did the era of unfettered capitalism end with this month’s financial meltdown, but so too did the days of appeals to consumers based solely on narrow self-interest or conspicuous consumption. Bling is out; doing good is in. Make that your message, and you have a story that will work effectively in the Millennial era.

    Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics

  • Obama’s Marketing Message

    In less than two weeks, when Barack Obama’s lead in all the polls is likely to be confirmed in the voting booth by the American electorate, millions of words will be written about why he won and how John McCain managed to lose. Unfortunately, marketing executives and corporate leaders have ignored some of the most important lessons from the campaign.

    Obama’s success to date lies in his ability to blend his own persona as a messenger with a unifying and uplifting message that reaches the newest generation of Americans, Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003. His campaign has mastered marketing through social networks and other Internet-based communication technologies. This “cool” approach defeated the “hot” rhetoric that came from his primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, and is likely to perform even more favorably against the more confrontational and traditional campaign of John McCain.

    But Millennials don’t just represent the key constituency behind Senator Obama’s successful campaign but also a key market opportunity for economic growth. Almost one-third of all Americans are in this generational cohort, and even though many of them are still too young to vote, almost all of them influence the daily purchases of the families of which they are a part. Until brand managers and marketing mavens master the art of reaching and attracting Millennials, consumer expenditures will continue to languish.

    CEOs need to learn how to create brands that attract Millennials with something more transcendent than their product’s functionality or characteristics. Corporations will only hit their growth targets if they are willing to change their own message, messenger and media to fit the tastes of this generation.

    A recent study by The Economist magazine’s Intelligence Unit suggests this campaign lesson has not yet penetrated the thinking of many in the “C suites” of the world’s corporations. More than half of those executives said they did not currently have a strategy to target or retain this demographic group. In their report, “Maturing with the Millenials”, survey respondents acknowledged the need for new tactics to target the millennial customer, but indicated a lack of readiness to do so.

    For instance, the report found that, “While 44% indicate that communicating the right messages in the right medium and at the right time is critical to their success, the majority have yet to leverage enriched content, peer recommendations and enhanced online experiences as part of their outreach—even though they acknowledge these are among the most effective ways to communicate with Millennials.” This sounds a lot like Hillary Clinton’s advisors Mark Penn and Mandy Grunwald on the eve of the Iowa caucuses when they derided the supporters of Obama as looking “like Facebook” pages. When Obama’s Facebook legions came out to vote in droves in the Iowa caucuses they dealt a fatal blow to Senator Clinton’s cause.

    Companies, fortunately, do not have to suffer the short shelf life of failed candidates. They can change their strategies in order to capture an emerging new base. We have seen this with companies that have succeeded with emerging ethnic markets at home and with whole new markets abroad.

    Even though most executives surveyed by The Economist understood that Millennials have specific consumer needs, few have tailored their marketing strategy for this generation. Four out of 10 executives in the Economist’s survey said that Web 2.0 technologies, such as webcasts and online forums, are the best way to serve Millennial customers. More than 80 percent agreed that consumer needs vary by age group, and 42 percent believed that a bigger share of investment should go towards Millennial customers. Yet remarkably, the respondents reported that telephone, e-mail and physical storefronts were the top three ways that Millennials could interact with their company currently.

    The risks companies are taking by not addressing Millennials are great. John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer for Young & Rubicam, details this argument in a new book, The Brand Bubble. His research shows that consumers’ trust in brands has declined by half in just ten years. Instead consumers increasingly turn to nontraditional sources of information, such as search engines and social networks, to determine what they should buy and from whom. That is why any good corporate CEO should check every day what customers are saying about their company on the mushrooming “Why I hate xx” websites that now exist for every major company.

    To restore their brand’s value and regain traction with the buying public, companies will need to reinvent themselves in order to engage Millennial constituencies on Millennial terms and in Millennial media. They will need to learn the art of attracting support from Millennials without appearing to be chasing after it in much the same way Obama did in his campaign.

    One leading-edge private sector example of how to pull off this Zen-like non-effort is Nike’s successful efforts to enhance its brand’s attractiveness by creating online communities of runners. By partnering with Apple it created an application for runners that transfers running time, distance and even calories burned to a Nano so that the results can be uploaded for sharing with others. By building virtual running communities, Nike gave its customers an opportunity to register their individual profiles while receiving content that they can access while running. Nike was able to create its own social network linking people with similar running habits, such as those who run with poodles, to produce a strong bond of affiliation among each member of the group, and from that experience an equally strong sense of loyalty to the Nike brand.

    In 2006, the International Television and Video Almanac pointed out that Americans were being bombarded with about “5,000 marketing messages each day, up from 3000 in 1990 and 1500 in 1960.” Nothing in the trend line for communication technologies suggests this amount of corporate generated content is likely to decrease in the coming decades. Not surprisingly, Millennials can absorb much more information at any single moment than previous generations. But this does NOT mean that they are absorbing information in the same way. To gain the attention and brand loyalty of Millennials, companies will have to turn to non-traditional, online information distribution platforms to create a new message that builds a sense of community and caring around their products.

    The best way to do that is to incorporate a cause or purpose into the reason for buying a product. It may be protecting the environment by going green, or reducing inequality in the world through acts of charity, or demonstrating a commitment to young people by investing in educational institutions, or all of the above. Regardless of the cause, not only did the era of unfettered capitalism end with this month’s financial meltdown, but so too did the days of appeals to consumers based solely on narrow self-interest or conspicuous consumption. Bling is out; doing good is in. Make that your message, and you have a story that will work effectively in the Millennial era.

    Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics (Rutgers University Press: 2008)

  • An Investment Agenda for the Millennial Era

    By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais

    Historians will mark 2008 as the year that started the fundamental political debate that will define America in the Millennial Era. This is not just because Millennials (young Americans born from 1982 to 2003) have propelled the candidacy of Barack Obama but also because their entire civic orientation is now permeating the policy debate crystallized by the nation’s unfolding “financial Pearl Harbor”.

    Clear indications of a shift can be seen in the adoption of the bipartisan bailout proposal and many cases of agreement across partisan lines on what needs to be done now. Both liberals like former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich and conservatives such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich agree that America should reinvest in its physical infrastructure. They were equally supportive of the need for the country to invest in human capital through a new educational system that would enable America to compete in the global economy. They each acknowledged the necessity for a health care system that would alleviate an ever-increasing financial burden on American families and businesses. From previously and presumably irreconcilably opposite sides of the political spectrum, Reich and Gingrich sketched out an economic growth agenda they could both support.

    Their conversation demonstrated one critical new reality: the demise of the ideologically driven Baby Boomer era of American politics. Although a stubborn majority within the Republican House minority implored its party to stick to its Reagan-era idealism by voting against the rescue package even the second time around, most GOP leaders, especially in the Senate, recognized that if their party didn’t change its rigid belief in free markets über alles, then as one put it, “Heaven help us” in November.

    Interestingly, October 1929 was the last time the market crashed as dramatically as it did on the day the Republicans first voted down their leadership’s recommendation. That event led to the end of America’s previous idealist era, one that also glorified free markets and attempted to enshrine laissez-faire economics as the end-all of U.S economic policy. What followed was an era of government intervention in the country’s economic well-being and an opportunity-expanding fiscal policy led by the civic generation of its time — the GI Generation. That generation supported policies that cut the share of the nation’s wealth held by its richest one percent from 50% on the day of the crash to 30% in 1949. Today’s civic generation, Millennials, are equally determined to reduce the level of economic inequality in America, which was approaching pre-depression levels before the market dived and investment houses disappeared from the landscape of Wall Street.

    Economic jingoists like Lou Dobbs may celebrate the humbling of the nation’s financial elites, but anger and resentment don’t make good economic policy. Instead, Americans will have to learn to behave like Millennials: finding win-win solutions that work for the whole group. The Millennial generation will create a new paradigm of governmental policy with guidelines for behavior established at the national level, but with implementation left to each individual or local community interacting with others in their peer-to-peer networks to make a choice on how best to comply with those national rules.

    This will create a “patient-centered healthcare system” analogous to the Millennial Generation’s fondness for user generated content on social networking sites like YouTube. America’s educational system will be refashioned with schools run as much by kids and their parents as it is by administrators. Just as Barack Obama’s acceptance speech called for individuals to make their homes more energy efficient and for executives to do the same with the companies they lead, energy and environmental policy in a Millennial era will be linked through policies that provide tax incentives along with moral persuasion from the bully pulpit of the presidency to ensure America finally ends its dependence on foreign oil. America’s role in the world will be to lead other nations in the way Millennials expect leaders to behave: finding consensus for a course of action that gains its power from the unity of the group, not the raw strength of the biggest kid on the block.

    This will require the country to make all types of productive investments. As we enter the Millennial era, America will experience changes as sweeping as any the country witnessed in the 1930s and 40s. If the past is any indication of the future, the Millennial Generation will provide the same level of leadership as America’s greatest generation did nearly eight decades ago. In the process the Millennials will put an end to the Boomer era’s destructive clashes of irreconcilable ideologies.

    Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics published in 2008 by Rutgers University Press

  • Bye Bye Boomers

    By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais

    The formal ratification of the outcome of the primary elections at the party’s national conventions marks more than just the beginning of a new era in American politics. It signals the demise of Boomer generation attitudes and beliefs as the dominant motif in American life.

    After 16 years of Baby Boomer presidents, first Bill Clinton and then George W. Bush, primary voters in both parties rejected quintessential Boomer ideologues (Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee) in favor of candidates who were explicitly opposed to Boomer-style politics. Although Barack Obama is chronologically a very young Boomer, he signaled, in a March 2007 Selma, Alabama speech, his desire to break with the divisive politics of an earlier, “Moses” generation. Instead he embraced the beliefs of this century’s “Joshua” generation, Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003. For his part, John McCain is a member of the older Silent Generation, born between 1925 and 1945 and has constantly exhibited that generation’s style, positioning himself as a political maverick who attempts to bridge ideological gaps to achieve larger goals.

    But the big break is with the Boomer generation. Unlike Boomers, Millennials have been raised to play nice with each other and find win-win solutions to any problem. Boomer (and Generation X) parents sat toddler Millennials in front of the television set to watch “Barney” and absorb each episode’s lesson of self-esteem and mutual respect (even as they bolted from the room, sick from the sweetness of it all). With the show’s “my friend is your friend and your friend is my friend” lyrics hard wired into their psyche, Millennials have a strong desire to share everything they do with everyone else.

    The arrival of social network technologies enabled Millennials to create the most intense, group-oriented decision-making process of any generation in American history. This generation’s need to make sure the outcome of both minor decisions, like where to hang out, and major decisions, such as whether go to war, reflects both a penchant for consensus and team work which will become the future benchmarks for American political life.

    In contrast Senator Clinton made a definitive—if sometimes a bit too strenuous—case for a Boomer style of leadership in her primary campaign, emphasizing the value of her experience and wisdom. Governors Huckabee and Romney’s approach, for their part, stridently insisted upon the need to preserve the superior set of traditional values .

    Now it’s time to encourage the Boomers to take their well-deserved retirement, and offer the opportunity for newer, Gen X leaders and their values. This may be difficult for many Xers, who will need to overcome their own lack of understanding of, and in some cases outright disdain for, the youngest generation. Humorists Steven Colbert and John Stewart, both quintessential Gen Xers, recently demonstrated their risk-taking mindset by mocking Millennial attitudes as demonstrated by Senator Obama’s rock star reception in Berlin. The failure of their Millennial audience to laugh at the joke, or buy into Senator McCain’s attempt to suggest it somehow made Obama less qualified to be President, demonstrates the challenge the Millennial zeitgeist will pose for those seeking to become the nation’s leaders.

    The change from Boomer to Millennial style is already becoming evident in other areas of American life as well. At the 1968 Olympics, as the Boomer inspired, idealist era began, African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the gold and bronze medalists in the men’s 200-meter race, raised a black-gloved fist in a protest for black power as the Star Spangled Banner was played to celebrate their victories. Forty years later, Jason Lezak, captured the values of the new Millennial era as he explained how he was able to swim the fastest 400-meter freestyle leg in history to bring gold to his teammates. “It’s the Olympics and I’m here for the USA . . . .I got a supercharge and took it from there. It was unreal.” Lezak was joined at the award ceremony by his Millennial teammate, Cullen Jones, only the second African-American to ever win a gold medal in swimming. In sharp contrast to Smith and Carlos forty years earlier, Jones happily celebrated the victory of his team and country.

    Ultimately the 2008 election will turn on which candidate can bring these new attitudes and beliefs to bear on the number one issue facing the country—the economy. Unlike Boomers, whose focus was on economic growth to support their workaholic personalities, Millennials are more concerned about economic inequality and believe government has a key role to play in bringing about a greater degree of economic fairness. Almost 70 percent of Millennials express a preference for “a bigger government that provides more services,” compared to only 43 percent of older generations who agreed with that statement.

    Connecting the current sorry state of the American economy and its dependence on foreign oil with the other favorite concern of Millennials, global warming, is an even better way to win this generation’s support on economic issues. Whoever is elected this year will need to reshape America’s economy in line with Millennial expectations of inclusiveness and fairness as dramatically as FDR’s New Deal created a new economic framework for the Millennial’s generational forbearers, the GI Generation.

    The Broadway musical, “Bye Bye Birdie,” captured the end of the conventional era of the ‘50s, as the onslaught of Rock n’ Roll pitted child against parent and ushered in an age that celebrated rebellion in all its forms. The confrontations between Boomer “Meathead” (Michael Stivic) on “All in the Family,” with his tradition bound father-in-law, Archie Bunker, captured his generation’s desire to overturn the establishment using the power of ideas to persuade the recalcitrant of the error of their ways.

    Now it’s time to realize new values are ascending. Millennials generally get along great with their parents and celebrate the wholesome values of “High School Musical,” where boys and girls of all types come together to defeat those that seek to win only for their own personal ambition. Those nominated in the next two weeks at their party’s convention should heed this lesson. To gain the presidency, the winning ticket will have to appeal to the Millennial sense of pride and teamwork in meeting the challenges the country faces.

    Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics published by Rutgers University Press.

  • Millennials and Home Ownership

  • Profile of Settled Millenials

  • A Return to ‘Avalon’

    By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais

    In his autobiographical film, “Avalon,” Barry Levinson captured what he believed to be the impact of America’s suburban exodus on his large and fractious family. He suggested that the weakening of the ties that bound his previously close-knit family was due to its dispersal to the suburbs rather than the social upheavals of the 1960s that he captured so well in the other two films in his Baltimore trilogy – “Diner” and “Liberty Heights.”

    It is true that from 1940 to 1960 the percentage of Americans living in suburbs doubled – from 15 to 30 percent. However, the weakening of family ties, as measured by such social indicators as rising teenage crime and pregnancy rates and declining school test scores just after that period of rising suburbanization, had more to do with the cycles of generational archetypes than the place where American families lived and were raised. Members of the Silent Generation, like Levinson and the two of us, as well as the older GI Generation, battled with the new, idealistic values of their Baby Boomer children. The intergenerational tensions, captured popularly and colorfully in the TV sitcom, “All in the Family,” simply overwhelmed the idyllic picture of American family life in the 1950s.

    But, these, like all generational trends, are cyclical. The very same generational forces that pulled American families apart in the late 1960s and 1970s, are about to return full circle to the attitudes and beliefs of a “civic” era very much like those of the 1950s and early 1960s, the golden years in Levinson’s memories. Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, members of the largest, most diverse and newest “civic” generation in American history are becoming adults, entering the workforce, getting married and settling down. Civic generations, like Millennials and the GI generation of the 1930s, believe in adhering to social rules, care deeply about the welfare of the group, and tend to create stable, law-abiding communities as they mature. As a result, where and how Millennials choose to live and raise their families will be the single most important force in shaping America’s housing and communities for the next two decades.

    Like their civic GI Generation grandparents or great grandparents, Millennials have a deep and abiding interest in the communities in which they live and participate. As Millennials grew up, this interest in forming communities was both enabled and demonstrated by the enormous popularity of social networks, such as MySpace and Facebook. Over eighty percent of all Millennials have a personal site on at least one of these networks, through which they interact and plan their activities with one another on a constant and ongoing basis.

    This desire to connect to their friends and, at the same time, build better communities is also evidenced in the strikingly high volunteer participation rates of Millennials, especially in comparison to those of their older Generation-X siblings or parents. Eighty percent of Millennials performed some sort of community service while in high school, triple the rate of high school-aged Gen-Xers back in the 1980s. Not only do seventy-percent of college-age Millennials report having done voluntary community service, but 85 percent of them also consider it an effective way to solve the nation’s problems.

    It is no coincidence that, during the week leading up to the 4th of July, America’s most important civic holiday, Senator Barack Obama, the presidential candidate with the greatest demonstrated appeal to Millennials, issued a call for mandatory programs of community service for high school and college students. As was the case with the civic GI Generation six decades ago, Obama proposed that this service be rewarded with financial assistance to help pay for higher education. In Obama’s words, community service “will be a central cause of my presidency.”

    The first initial indications of how this sense of community will impact the behavior of Millennials as they enter young adulthood are now becoming available. They contain good news for America’s suburbs and for those remaining in family-oriented neighborhoods in our nation’s cities.

    One thing seems clear: Millennials generally lack the animus against suburbs that have been a major element of Baby Boomer urbanist ideology over the past few decades. According to survey data from Frank N. Magid Associates, America’s leading entertainment and media research firm, young Millennials already reside in the suburbs to at least the same extent as members of older generations. The Magid data also suggest that this residential preference is not likely to change as the Millennial Generation matures and “settles down.” Once Millennials marry their firm preference is to live in a single-family home, and not in a typical urban setting of lofts, condos or apartments. Almost half of “settled” Millennials (those who are married, many with children) own their home. Only about a quarter are renters.

    Virtually none of the “settled” Millennials still reside with their parents or other relatives. This represents a significant difference from the status of Millennials of about the same age (mid-twenties) who are working, but single. About half of this latter group rent their home, either alone or with others, while only 13 percent are homeowners. About a quarter of the unmarried Millennials live with their parents, which often earns them disdainful comments from older generations. Early evidence seems to suggest that this “return to the nest” phenomenon has more to do with the economics of graduating from college with large student loans unpaid and entry level pay than it does to any lack of energy or unwillingness to accept adult responsibilities. It also has to do with one of the defining characteristics of Millennials: they get along better with their parents than either Boomers or Gen-Xers.

    This generational trait is especially important for the future of America’s suburbs. Unlike Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers, Millennials tend to be friends with and enjoy staying connected to their parents, if not in person than on a constant basis on cell phones or the Internet. In contrast, during the 1960s and 1970s, Boomers moved as far away as they could from their parents’ home in order to “find themselves” and express their own unique values. In the 1980s and 1990s, Gen-Xers often reacted to their relatively unloving upbringing (think “Married…with Children” vs. “Leave it to Beaver”) by rejecting every aspect of their childhood, including leafy lawns and spacious suburban housing. By contrast, Millennials actually like and respect their parents, and often prefer to live as their parents do, preferably in a place that’s close to their parents.

    America’s love of suburban living is continuing unabated long after the time in American history captured so poignantly in “Avalon.” In the 1970s, racial tensions and the general deterioration of central cities pushed more Americans into the suburbs. A plurality (38%) lived in the suburbs as early as 1970 and 45 percent did so by 1980. In 2000, around the time the last members of the Millennial Generation were being born, fully half of all Americans were living either in older suburbs or the new exurbs beyond them. Despite the problems posed by high gas prices and the mortgage crisis, suburban growth is still outpacing that of both urban and rural areas, as not only homeowners but also businesses continue to locate in the suburbs. The desire of Americans for their own plot of land likely will continue well into the 21st century as well.

    The community- and family-orientation of the Millennial Generation will only reinforce the continued growth of America’s suburbs. Levinson’s experience growing up with his extended family in a tight-knit urban ethnic neighborhood will likely never return in quite the same way. After all, America’s rising ethnic minorities are also moving heavily to the suburbs as well as to remaining family-friendly moderate-density neighborhoods closer to the city.

    Yet the suburban tilt of this migration does not mean that communities sharing the joys of family and friends that Levinson longed for have become extinct. The main difference is that this time, most Americans will share that experience, not in central city ethnic enclaves, but in suburbs or moderate density urban communities with houses located conveniently to their work – if not actually in their Internet-wired home. This return to “Avalon” will occur thanks, in large part, to the civic spirit and community orientation of America’s next great generation, the Millennials.

    Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are co-authors of “Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics,” published by Rutgers University Press.