Marketers are pouring money into figuring out the tastes and habits of Generation Alpha — kids born from 2010 through 2024— who are unprecedented in the extent they're growing up online, Jennifer A. Kingson writes.

Why it matters: They're weaned on TikTok, Amazon and in-app purchases. They're learning from their millennial parents to hold brands accountable for causes like social justice and sustainability. And no prior age cohort will be as large in size or marketing power.

Where it stands: While the oldest members of Generation Alpha are only 11, they already stand out from Gen Z in their worldliness, brand awareness and influence over household spending.

• They're not just pre-consumers: Their sway and leverage over adults' purchasing decisions surpass any prior generation, market researchers say.
• Most won't remember a world without COVID-19, an iPhone or the threat of environmental Armageddon.
• "When they have all been born [2025], they will number almost 2 billion — the largest generation in the history of the world," according to Mark McCrindle, the Australian social analyst who coined the term "Generation Alpha."

It's no coincidence that Instagram and the iPad were introduced in 2010 —the year this generation was handed the torch — or that "app" was named word of that year.

• "They are very sophisticated," McCrindle, the founder and principal of McCrindle Research in Sydney, tells Axios. "We can no longer design products for them and push the products at them. They want a seat at the table."
• They're unusually visual in how they consume content, highly networked in how they socialize, and global in their outlook and perspective.
• "They can send a trending hashtag, they can start a social media campaign and bring about change," says McCrindle, who published a book on Generation Alpha this year. "They’ve seen that in their own experience, in #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter."

The intrigue: Generation Alpha will grow up knowing that they don't need to be old enough to vote to influence the ballot box.

• Creating mountain-moving hashtags and memes is second nature to them.
• They'll be aware of influencers like the teen TikTokers who helped get President Biden elected and the youth organizers who targeted individual politicians and voter turnout campaigns in 2020.

Between the lines: Global marketing giants are already in awe of Generation Alpha's might, and using all their powers of social listening to tap into what they're thinking.

• Brands like Mattel are "reading the writing on the wall and rolling out the welcome mat for Generation Alpha," per AdAge.
• "Like their elders, they care about issues such as sustainability and social equality — but unlike previous generations, they have embraced activism from a very young age and expect brand change as a result."
• While the group is still evolving — and some still haven't been born yet — "if current trends hold, Generation Alpha kids will be more racially and ethnically diverse than their Generation Z counterparts," says the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to children and families.
• "Members of Generation Alpha will also be more likely to go to college, more likely to grow up in a single-parent household and more likely to be surrounded by college-educated adults," the foundation says.

What's next: Soon we'll be parsing the tastes of Generation Beta.

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Better sensors, more intelligent AI and the coming wave of 5G wireless could finally fulfill the promise of the smart city, Axios Future correspondent Bryan Walsh reports.

Why it matters: How we organize, run and power our cities will be increasingly important in the years ahead, as urbanization expands and the damaging effects of climate change compound.

• A smarter city can be a more sustainable and livable one, but connecting where we live carries privacy threats as well as the risks of more disruptive cyberattacks.

By the numbers: Even with the pandemic suburban boom, 80% of Americans live in urban areas, up from 64% in 1950. The percentage is projected by the UN to rise to 89% by 2050.

• Pre-COVID, 3 million people a week around the world were moving to cities — which brings challenges around overburdened infrastructure and equity.

Between the lines: Those millions of people create a deluge of data through their actions and behaviors — 16.5 zettabytes this year alone, Sameer Sharma, global GM for IOT Solutions at Intel, told me in a recent Axios event.

• That amounts to about 250 billion times more data than a 64 GB iPhone can hold, and until recently, much of that data went to waste.
• As cities add sensors to capture that data — and in the future, 5G wireless to capture even more — and harness AI to draw insights from it, they can bring meaningful intelligence to both the day-to-day operations and longer-term planning of an urban area.
• That will have a direct impact on real-world problems. Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, a spinoff of Alphabet's smart-city arm Sidewalk Labs, helped create North America's first virtual power plant, which pays customers to reduce energy use at moments of high demand, eliminating the need to add more physical power generation.

The other side: Smarter cities are built on data collection, which brings with it concerns about both cybersecurity and privacy.

• Sidewalk Labs last year abandoned its plan to create a smart neighborhood in Toronto. It attributed the decision to economic uncertainty, but the project faced significant pushback over data privacy concerns.

The bottom line: The future of the world is still an urban one, but the nature of that future will depend in part on whether cities can grow smart as well as grow big.

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Joby Aviation, which is working to certify its electric vertical take-off and landing air taxi (eVTOL), is simultaneously thinking within and outside the box, Axios' Andrew Freedman writes.

Why it matters: First, the plane looks like the result of a merger between a helicopter and dragonfly. Second, and here is where the traditional part comes in, Joby is designing its plane and planning its flight operations for today's air traffic system, rather than waiting for the FAA to certify new "vertiports" where eVTOL aircraft can land and take off vertically.

• It wasn't until late last week, when I tried out the Joby flight simulator in Washington, that I realized what sets this company apart: Its aircraft design.

How it works: In the simulator, I took off from Washington Reagan International Airport and climbed to about 500 feet. I then took my hands off the controls as instructed (an Airbus-like joystick in one hand, and a "speed" control — not a throttle — in the other), and was astonished that the plane just sat there, maintaining altitude, airspeed and its angle of attack.

• I practiced forward flight, and a transition to a helicopter-like landing at the Pentagon heliport, under the guidance of Greg Bowles, Joby's head of government affairs.
• The plane's redundancy is comforting, with multiple small, simple electric motors across the aircraft, making a single point of failure less impactful. Another safety feature is the flight software's prevention of any pilot inputs that would put the plane outside the envelope of safe flight, similar to how modern commercial aircraft work.

Between the lines: Joby's aircraft has already proved to have a range of 150 miles, and NASA sound testing has shown it has a far smaller noise footprint when compared to today's fleet of executive helicopters and small planes. So it's unlikely to provoke noise complaints.

• Joby is working toward an airworthiness certification in 2023, with operations starting in 2024, that would allow it to operate its electric air taxi within the air traffic environment that exists today, Bowles said.

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On average, the price of a single-family home rose 12.4% in the year ending May 31, to $301,855 — though the figure is much higher in hot-market states like Idaho, Arizona and Utah, Jennifer writes.

Why it matters: The pandemic fervor for real estate continues to overheat the housing market, making homeownership elusive for many and keeping others stuck in living situations they'd prefer to upgrade or otherwise change.

• See where your state ranks here, in a report by Move.org that used the Zillow Home Value Index to compare home prices from May 2020 to May 2021.

Details: While 38 states saw increases in the double digits, only 13 states had increases of under 10%, according to Move.org, a site that lets people compare resources for moving homes.

• The only states that saw increases of 5% or less were Alaska, North Dakota and Wyoming.
• Zero states saw housing prices fall.

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In the age of remote work, dozens of smaller cities have tried to lure coastal teleworkers. And they're getting more creative, Erica Pandey writes.

What's happening: The latest such effort — out of Greensburg, Indiana — offers remote workers free babysitting services if they move to town through a program called "Grandparents on Demand."

The big picture: Many workers have used pandemic-induced telework as an excuse to ditch expensive cities for smaller towns with milder temperatures, cheaper child care, lower housing prices and more.

• For example, Tulsa, Oklahoma, will pay workers $10,000 to move there. Topeka, Kansas, is offering cash and free Jimmy John's.
• Greensburg — a rural town of just 13,000 people, halfway between Indianapolis and Cincinnati — is hoping its perks will stand out.
• In addition to $5,000 to offset moving expenses, the town wants to integrate potential digital nomads into its community by pairing them with local seniors who will babysit free of charge.
• The package also includes $2,000 in "gifts" like membership to the local co-working space and the YMCA.

The bottom line: While compelling, these perks aren't pulling workers away from cities in huge numbers. Most people will eventually have to work in person at least a couple of days a week, and so will have to live within commuting distance of their office buildings.