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High-Tech Millennial Lifestyle Inspires Micro Apartment Boom

A new generation of tech workers values location over square footage, and housing unit sizes are shrinking across the country.

Sergey Novikov / Shutterstock

Since the 1980s, cities around the country have been contracting serious cases of Silicon Valley envy. Everyone, it seemed, was looking for the magic formula to create their own high-tech incubators with educated, upwardly mobile work forces that would drive their cities to modernize and grow.

From Seattle to Portland, and from Denver to Austin, new tech hubs are prospering. Many of them are filling up with emigres from the Bay Area who simply couldn’t afford to work in tech there any longer.

But it’s not just the workers themselves who are spreading their wings. The lifestyle trends pioneered by a new generation of tech millennials, and by technology itself, are also spreading from coast to coast. And that is influencing housing trends. Millennials are demanding an “on-demand lifestyle” that values location over square footage and amenities.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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