Urbany — Trendwatching.com’s new word for the urban experience lifestyle.
100 years ago, less than 5 percent of the world’s population lived in cities. Today over 50% call urban areas home and that number could reach 70% within a few decades.
What’s the significance? Urban culture is taking over. As explained by Trendwatcher:
A forever-growing number of more sophisticated, more demanding, but also more try-out-prone, super-wired urban consumers are snapping up more ‘daring’ goods, services, experiences, campaigns and conversations.
So, what are your examples of the most extreme “urbany” you’ve seen? Put another way, what daily happenings in cities would most shock a time traveler from the 1950s?
Here are mine (in no particular order):
- The widespread daily $5 Latte habit
- Dozens of people sitting in a cafe, all texting on their cel phones but not talking to each other
- Ordinary people having personal trainers
- How busy a restaurant patio is on a warm day, with both men and women (in the 1950s these people would all have 4 kids at home)
What else?
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Small dogs dressed up and taken everywhere.
-Paying with plastic cards instead of cash
-Signs with phone number larger than the name of the pizza shoppe
-Car sharing services
-Escelator etiquette, walk left / stand right
-Bicycle lanes
-Reading a FREE newspaper while PAYING for a bottle of water
-Proliferation of road side assistance services while full service gas stations disappear
-Home staging as a profession
Love the small dogs observation!
Home staging — I like that one. Bicycle lanes, another good one.
How about “Life Coach” as a profession. Not fully “urban” but cities offer lots of career and personal options, such that some people seem to need a coach to navigate it.
A mom working from home on something that does not involve domestic services or agriculture or party sales. Same goes for dad/man, without party sales or sewing/cooking.
suburban shopping areas no longer referring to themselves as malls but as “town centers”
real estate agents posting walkscores with condo listings
newly opened night clubs with one word names
..and one syllable names too! “Rush” “George”
Gets me thinking… restaurants as well having one word and one syllable names. “C” & “NU” are a couple newer places in Vancouver.
I love when you talk about this type of stuff in your blog. Perhaps could you continue this?