Gen Z: Best places for young adults to live in 2019

·Reporter

September 20, 2019 at 12:20 PM

Once projected as the generation to permanently alter the fabric of adulthood and upend time-honored American hallmarks, millennials are now pushing middle age and hitting all the conventional milestones previous generations have before: marriage, children and homeownership.

So the spotlight of societal fascination has now shifted to the up-and-comers: Generation Z, those born from 1996 to 2010.

As the oldest members of Gen Z are set to graduate college and enter the workforce, the world is trying to figure out what makes this cohort of digital natives tick, including where they will choose to spend their young adult years.

A recent study from Nestpick attempts to forecast where this ever-evolving generation will plant roots first, using factors and values determined to be closely held by Gen Z.

tk tk — A recent study from Nestpick forecasts which worldwide cities are the best places for Gen Z to live in 2019. (Credit: Yahoo Finance)

Worldwide cities were categorized and ranked according to digital connectivity, affordability, socially liberal principles, opportunities for recreation, friendliness to entrepreneurship, and abundance of co-working spaces, among other factors.

There’s one hitch to the list of cities, though, says Jason Dorsey, president of The Center for Generational Kinetics, a consulting firm. While Gen Z aspires to live in nexuses of diversity, commerce and technology, those wants are often associated with high costs of living.

“The challenges for many of the cities is they're extremely expensive,” Dorsey says. “When it comes to Gen Z’s financial frugality, their ideas and desires to live in these cities will come crashing into reality when it comes time to pay the rent.”

Young Americans who came of age during the Great Recession are acutely aware of the long-term struggles brought on by credit card debt and inflated student loans and mortgages, Dorsey says. High rent is a direct violation of Gen Z’s unofficial financial code.

Young demonstrators hold placards as they attend a climate change protest organised by "Youth Strike 4 Climate", opposite the Houses of Parliament in central London on February 15, 2019. - Hundreds of young people took to the streets to demonstrate Friday, with some of them having gone on strike from school, as part of a global youth action over climate change. (Photo by Ben STANSALL / AFP) (Photo credit should read BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images) — LONDON, ENGLAND: Young demonstrators hold placards as they attend a climate change protest organized by "Youth Strike 4 Climate", opposite the Houses of Parliament in central London on February 15, 2019. (Photo: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images)

“Taking a job in a city where you're not able to really support yourself does not seem to be the decision that they want to make,” Dorsey says.

Projected to outnumber millennials in terms of population, Gen Z accounts for nearly a third of the world’s 7.7 billion people born since 2001, according to a Bloomberg analysis using United Nations data. Based on their collective size, Gen Z has the ability to shift the global population and the way we all work, live and play.

Here’s where these young adults should land, according to Nestpick’s analysis.

Top 25 cities for Gen Z

1 - London, England

2 - Stockholm, Sweden

3 - Los Angeles, California

4 - Toronto, Canada

5 - New York, New York

East Side Gallery is an outdoor art gallery located on a 1,316 meter section of the Berlin Wall, which were saved from demolition for that purpose. It is the longest and longest art gallery in the world, consisting of 103 murals painted by artists and paying homage to the freedom that occurred with the end of the Cold War. April 21, 2019 in Berlin, Germany (Photo by Oscar Gonzalez/NurPhoto via Getty Images) — BERLIN, GERMANY: East Side Gallery is an outdoor art gallery located on a 1,316-meter section of the Berlin Wall, which were saved from demolition for that purpose. (Photo: Oscar Gonzalez/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

6 - Berlin, Germany

7 - Munich, Germany

8 - San Francisco, California

9 - Amsterdam, Netherlands

10 - Vancouver, Canada

11 - Paris, France

PARIS, FRANCE - AUGUST 01: Love locks are pictured on the Debilly Passerelle over the Seine River, near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France on August 01, 2019. Municipality of Paris, had been removed love locks due to the weights on the Pont de l'Archeveche and the Pont des Arts, near the Notre Dame cathedral on June 2015. (Photo by Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) — PARIS, FRANCE: Love locks are pictured on the Debilly Passerelle over the Seine River, near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France on August 01, 2019. (Photo: Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

12 - Manchester, England

13 - Copenhagen, Denmark

14 - Helsinki, Finland

15 - Montreal, Canada

16 - Gothenburg, Sweden

Tourists photograph themselves with the bronze statue "The Little Mermaid" at the harbour in Copenhagen on October 9, 2015. Based on the fairy tale of the same name by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, the statue has become an icon and a major tourist attraction in the Danish capital since 1913. In recent decades it has become a popular target for defacement by vandals and political activists. AFP PHOTO / ODD ANDERSEN (Photo credit should read ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images) — COPENHAGEN: DENMARK: Tourists photograph themselves with the bronze statue "The Little Mermaid" at the harbour in Copenhagen on October 9, 2015. (Photo: ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images)

17 - Frankfurt, Germany

18 - Malmo, Sweden

19 - Brussels, Belgium

20 - Seattle, Washington

21 - Boston, Massachusetts

BOSTON, MA - DECEMBER 30: Boston's Faneuil Hall is pictured on Dec. 30, 2017. Faneuil Hall will close to the public for a renovation project, with plans to reopen in spring 2018. Heating, ventilation, air conditioning and fire alarm upgrades are all planned, as are a new handicap chair lift for the Great Hall stage and an elevator replacement. The last major renovation was from 1990 to 1991, according to the city. (Photo by Dina Rudick/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) — BOSTON, MA: Boston's Faneuil Hall is pictured on Dec. 30, 2017. (Photo: Dina Rudick/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

22 - Edinburgh, Scotland

23 - Melbourne, Australia

24 - Sydney, Australia

25 - Hamburg, Germany

Stephanie is a writer for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @SJAsymkos.

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Top 25 cities for Gen Z

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