US cities riding high on millennial boom, but for how long?

DURING the past decade, many US cities have been transformed by young professionals of the millennial generation, with downtowns turning into bustling neighbourhoods full of new apartments and pricey coffee bars. But soon, cities may start running out of millennials.

Demographers, along with economists and real estate consultants, are starting to contemplate what urban cores will look like now that the generation - the United States' largest - is cresting.

Millennials are generally considered to be those born between the early 1980s and late 1990s or early 2000s, and many in this generation are ageing from their 20s into the more traditionally suburban child-raising years. There are some signs that the inflow of young professionals into cities has reached its peak, and that the outflow of mid-30s couples to the suburbs has resumed after stalling during the Great Recession.