Look out, multifamily developers and city planners – it looks like the kids might not be all right after all.

A recent New York Times story posits that we may have reached peak Millennial population in urban environments. The wave of 25-year-old Millennials who want to live in city centers has crested, or will soon do so. If this generation follows past precedent, they will all move out to the suburbs eventually – and all of the new apartments under construction won’t have anyone to live in them. Whether that peak is now or sometime in the future – and whether Millennials will behave as their Boomer predecessors have done – will have enormous impacts on housing, commerce and the composition of our city centers.

It’s generally accepted in the world of urban planning that the Millennial generation – commonly defined as those born in the years between the early 1980s and the late 1990s – prefer city living. There are a number of contributing factors, including the generation’s preference for walkability, desire to live close to amenities and, of course, the allure of living in the big city in one’s 20s.

Another contributing factor – which can’t really be deemed a “preference” – is the undeniable fact that these young adults graduated into one of the worst job markets in history. When there were jobs available, those jobs tended to be in urban hubs.

So it has gone with each generation – the young live in cities and enjoy the nightlife, eventually settling down with spouses and children and pursuing a relatively slower-paced lifestyle in the suburbs. But those pesky Millennials don’t seem to be following a script on housing; their marriages, children and home purchases occur much later than those of their parents and grandparents’ generations. (Probably due to a combination of the aforementioned poor job market and crushing student loan debt, but that’s a discussion for another time.)

There are indications that the wave has crested in Greater Boston. Several recent reports have concluded that area rents are leveling off and/or dropping – indicating, one might assume, either a decline in the number of renters or their waning interest. But as Jim Morrison found this week, those declines are in the high end of the market and mostly due to sign-on incentives. There’s not much indication of relief for the middle and low end of the market, where most people actually live. Theoretically a softening on the high end will eventually effect the middle, too, but we all know how well trickle-down economics works in the real world.

This does not take into account the Boomers’ desire to revisit their hedonistic 20s and return to urban cores in their retirement. Fortunately most of the recent building in Boston proper has been on the luxury side of the scale, and an influx of elderly – flush with cash from the sale of their suburban manse – isn’t going to do much to soften the cost of high-end condos.

Outside The Hub of the Universe it’s another story. All those planned transit-oriented developments in Gateway Cities are in for a tough transition if, in five or 10 years, Millennials decide they want that picket fence after all.