Millenials in landscape architecture

Ryan Deane has a great post about how Millenials are changing landscape architectural firms. "The beauty of our generation is that we all know at least two languages; our native tongue, and some capacity of a digital vernacular." There is more to it than that, but that begins to capture what is happening.

Millenial mysteries

Lots of mentions lately for the Millenials. Who are they? They are the generation in college right now.  Also known as the echo boom or Generation Y, they are a large group (unlike Gen X) who may really take the US in new directions. They may have already turned the last presidential election.

• The Daily Beast recently answered, Who are the Millenials?
• Now that they are flocking into cities for urban lifestyles and car-free living, Atlantic Cities asked, Will they stay in the cities?
• And, as the Baby Boomers keep hogging the money and attention and culture, the Daily Beast asked whether Millenials will ultimately get the short end of the stick. But not as nicely as I have stated it here.
• An English teacher in Mexico asks, Are teachers the biggest barrier to Gen Y's education? (Well, there is a LOT more to his paper than that, but you can read it to get the rest.)
• And Texas researchers conducted a study have found that Millenials think that news is "garbage, lies, one-sided, propaganda, repetitive and boring."

As members of the generation enter the planning and design workforce, do they have different expectations?
Does this generation need a change in how we plan and design landscapes for them?
If you are Gen Y, how will your approach to design be different than previous designers?

Dream 'hood?

Claiming that "For Gen Y, it's not about the dream house, but the dream 'hood," doesn't change the fact that Gen Y is smaller than either the generation before it or after it.  Niche markets are big, but Generation Me is the one that'll change the real estate market.

Is Gen X really in charge?

Some people are using next week's peaceful transition of power as a metaphor for everything under the sun. Tammy Erickson, at the Harvard Business Review, thinks that this is a time for many in business too. Gen Ys are being integrated fully into the work teams and Xers are taking the reins while the baby boomers are stepping back to help. She writes:

Will these new roles suit the times? I think perhaps they will. Bill Strauss and Neil Howe, coauthors of Generations, posit that each generation makes a unique bequest to those that follow -- and generally seeks to correct the excesses of the previous generation. They argue that the Boomer excess is ideology -- and that the Generation X reaction to that excess involves an emphasis on pragmatism and effectiveness.

This generational priority will give X'ers a strong advantage in remaking organizations to reflect twenty-first-century realities: the need for transparency, accountability, real-time performance, lack of ideology, top-of-market effectiveness, and cash value.

What will that mean for the professional firms and public offices where our grads are working? Is there any chance that the Ys will jump past the Xs and take over directly from the boomers?