Originally Posted by
FBinNY
...Right now we're on the third ripple from the WWII baby boom, so there are larger numbers of young single adults, and young childless couples. This is the age group that is most likely to live downtown and go carless. Some years down the road (no pun) many of these will have kids, move to the burbs, and buy some sort of car...
I guess you haven't been to Portland, OR. It's not so much a city as it is a contiguous suburb. Almost all of the residents of Portland are living in the same housing you would see in any bedroom community suburb across the nation, except that some of the housing stock is a bit older than is typical for a suburb in the western U.S. The young adults who seem to comprise a significant percentage of the cyclists in PDX can have their kids, live in suburban houses and not even bother to change addresses from their current locations.