Nine Shift

Julie and Bill visit Gen Yland - part one

For Willie's 21st birthday, Willie invited us out to celebrate. The town is called PDX. He put us up in a Gen Y hotel in the middle of GenYland. Here's a series of posts and photos on how different it was.

The elevator is next to the bikes
The last thing the check in clerk at the front desk says, "The elevators are near...." In this hotel, she said, "The elevator is next to the bikes."   Sure enough, there were two bikes locked and seemingly welded together in the lobby. Bikes are a symbol for Gen Y.  A symbol of transportation, saving the planet, and having fun.

And of course you can take your bike to the room. So after Willie got off work (at 6 a.m. !) he brought his bike up to our room.  Try that in a Marriott. 

Dad experiences urban-suburb shift

From Nine Shifter Suzanne Kart in Bay City, Michigan, a conversation with her father who lives in a Detroit suburb:

"My dad is part Slovak and his family always belonged to the “Slovak Hall” in Detroit. My dad heard they were renovating the hall (it’s near downtown Detroit) and went down to check it out. He said something interesting happened in the neighborhood around there. It had been deteriorated and really poor people lived there. However, my dad said they tore down all the houses and put up new ones (in proximity to downtown Detroit). I asked him where all the poor people went and he said they came to Dearborn (which is a suburb where my folks live). You see, on my folks’ street a bunch of houses have been sold to a landlord who rents them out as low income housing.  The houses are all about 1000 square feet and up until recently were typically owner occupied. The people in the neighborhood tended to be middle class, like teachers, nurses, people who work at “Fords.” Interestingly, my father has not read the Nine Shift, does not know the theory about urban neighborhoods getting more dense, he just noticed it on his own."