There are plenty of ways many people consider Gen Zers different from millennials. Anecdotally speaking, they part their hair differently, wear their jeans lower and baggier, and use their own slang.
When it comes to cities they want to call home, Gen Z is making very different choices than the millennial generation. Members of Gen Z — those ages 18 to 24 — have flooded Ann Arbor, Michigan, the U.S. city that saw its Gen Z population grow the fastest in 2022, according to new data from SmartAsset.
The financial services company used data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey to determine which U.S. cities saw the most Gen Zers move in throughout 2022.
The city with the fastest-growing millennial population is over 700 miles away in Cambridge, Massachusetts, according to a separate SmartAsset report based on the same data. While both cities offer bustling downtown areas and prestigious academic environments, Ann Arbor boasts a significantly lower cost of living, according to estimates from Salary.com.
It's not just their top picks, either. Millennials and Gen Zers appear to have strikingly different preferences when it comes to the cities they're moving to, according to SmartAsset's rankings.
Millennials seem to prefer the West Coast, with four of the 10 fastest-growing cities among those ages 25 to 44 in California and Washington. Gen Z, however, skews more toward the East Coast, with five of its top 10 cities lying in eastern states.
Here are the top 10 U.S. cities Gen Zers are flocking to.
1. Ann Arbor, Michigan
- New Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 26.4%
- Total Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 35.9%
2. Provo, Utah
- New Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 24.7%
- Total Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 42.4%
3. Boulder, Colorado
- New Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 23.4%
- Total Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 33.2%
4. College Station, Texas
- New Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 22.2%
- Total Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 39.2%
5. Athens, Georgia
- New Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 17.4%
- Total Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 27.7%
6. Tallahassee, Florida
- New Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 17.4%
- Total Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 29.5%
7. Berkeley, California
- New Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 15.8%
- Total Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 26.5%
8. Gainesville, Florida
- New Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 15.4%
- Total Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 35.0%
9. Columbia, South Carolina
- New Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 15.1%
- Total Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 25.9%
10. Syracuse, New York
- New Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 13.8%
- Total Gen Zers as a percentage of population: 19.6%
Many of the cities seeing a rise in Gen Z residents are college towns, including Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan, and Provo, the location of Brigham Young University.
That makes sense, since the generation includes current 18- and 19-year-olds. College students may get counted in the census as city residents while they live on campus.
Millennials' most sought-after city, Cambridge, Massachusetts, is also a college town, home to both Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But millennials' other top cities are better known for their post-graduate career prospects.
Millennials' No. 2 pick, Santa Clara, California, is in the heart of Silicon Valley, and No. 3 Seattle is also a major tech hub.
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