| Abstract: | Challenges arising from changing demographics, expensive housing, and precarious labor have prompted recent interest in the residential geographies of young adults. Yet, despite attention to young adults' diverse housing pathways, I argue that greater focus is needed on the place-based and spatial underpinnings and effects of particular housing pathways: Connections to urban processes of “youthification”—the concentration of young adults in dense neighborhoods—and “studentification”—whereby an area becomes dominated by university students—remain underdeveloped, as do linkages between these phenomena and gentrification. I explore these connections through a critical review of extant literature to show that the enactment of some pathways is associated with particular urban processes, which might foreclose certain pathways for other individuals. Finally, I identify three crucial areas of inquiry: (1) how youthification, studentification, and gentrification interact; (2) how these processes shape and are shaped by diverging individual housing pathways; and (3) how differences among young adults such as race, ethnicity, and gender intersect with age in the course of these processes. |
