Cities Compete in Hipness Battle to Attract Young

NY Times ^ | Nov. 26, 2006 | SHAILA DEWAN

[seacapn]

ATLANTA, Nov. 24 — Some cities will do anything they can think of to keep young people from fleeing to a hipper town.

In Lansing, Mich., partiers can ease from bar to bar on the new Entertainment Express trolley, part of the state’s Cool Cities Initiative. In Portland, Ore., employees at an advertising firm can watch indie rock concerts at lunch and play “bump,” an abbreviated form of basketball, every afternoon.

And in Memphis, employers pay for recruits to be matched with hip young professionals in a sort of corporate Big Brothers program. A new biosciences research park is under construction — not in the suburbs, but downtown, just blocks from the nightlife of Beale Street.

These measures reflect a hard demographic reality: Baby boomers are retiring and the number of young adults is declining. By 2012, the work force will be losing more than two workers for every one it gains.

Cities have long competed over job growth, struggling to revive their downtowns and improve their image. But the latest population trends have forced them to fight for college-educated 25- to 34-year-olds, a demographic group increasingly viewed as the key to an economic future.

Mobile but not flighty, fresh but technologically savvy, “the young and restless,” as demographers call them, are at their most desirable age, particularly because their chances of relocating drop precipitously when they turn 35. Cities that do not attract them now will be hurting in a decade.

[RightOnline]

They're savages, pure and simple.

[lesser_satan]

My 'rents kicked me out in my very early 20's. They gave me a bunch of housewares and furniture for Christmas one year, and I took the hint.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

...part of the state’s Cool Cities Initiative...

We have businesses and people fleeing the state like Bambi from a forest fire and this is Jenny G.'s answer. We'll spend money on trolley cars to make the cities "cool."

*snort*

[seacapn]

I think the article made a good point about that kind of top-down social engineering - cities with young people have things that appeal to young people partly because young people demanded them. Simply creating something to ATTRACT young people may not work.

[t_skoz]

Would you recruit me? I'm 26; live in a small, not very hip city; wear conservative dress at work (they won't let us wear suits); have 37 billable hours every week at work; I don't have any piercings, but have full sleeves on my arm and leg and regularly stay out until 2 or 3am with my bandmates. By the way it's spelled "tattoos" not "tattooes".

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Simply creating something to ATTRACT young people may not work.

Frankly it doesn't. People create demand. If you start putting in things that you think might be in demand at some point in the future you are setting up a business to fail.

People don't choose moving to Lansing over Jacksonville because Jacksonville doesn't have a trolley where you can drink your coffee. They will choose to move to Lansing when Lansing has something real to offer. Roads without potholes the size of your tire would be a good place to start.

[AlaskaErik]

I'll just say that I can't imagine spending three hours a day in my car.

Neither can I. I work in the next town over, which is even smaller than my town. While the city commuters from my town are on their hour long white knuckle drive I'm on a leisurely 20-25 minute drive with nary a car on the road.

[VoiceOfBruck]

No mention of Detroit. Hmmmm.

[sphinx]

My record, door to desk and on time, was eight minutes. That was on a bike before I had to pick up Little People after school. Now we walk.

[qam1]

Xer Ping

Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.

Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.  

[Mr. Silverback]

I live in a tragically unhip city of about 25,000, and am happy as a clam. the only improvement we need is a better hobby shop.

[ark_girl]

It's like Rush says....follow the money. Young people are moving to cities like Austin, Atlanta, and Charlotte because they have a reputation for having lots of good paying jobs and a reasonable cost of living. I've heard that steadily for quite some time that those are good places to live for that reason. Places like New York or Boston or San Fransisco sound fun to visit, but my perception of all of them is that they're extremely expensive and the bump in salary doesn't make up for the bump in cost of living. Living in Little Rock, I can own a car and a home on my salary. I fully expect that I could do the same in Atlanta. In New York, it would take every penny I make to rent a small, crappy apartment. Best I can tell, IT people don't make remotely enough to buy anything. Same for Boston. Plus, they tax the crap out of you.

Follow the money. Young people are moving where they can best afford to live.

[ladyjane]

So why are you still in Virginia if you'd prefer Charlotte?

[tioga]

DINKS?

[ladyjane]

I just went to homefair.com to check out the cost of living in NYC versus Charlotte, NC.

If you make $100,000 a year in NY you would need to earn $15,254 a year to have a comparable standard of living.

[Ditter]

Something you will never have in a small town is privacy.

[tioga]

The tioga daughter moved from a rural village in upstate NY to San Jose. Her brother who had moved to LA then Florida followed her to San Jose. They both love it. I believe she lives in Meadow something now that she has a new place. She found a job and appears to be settled. I have never been out to visit, guess I don't know the way to San Jose yet.

[Dont Mention the War]

I find this article utterly bizarre (and given its source, probably made up to an extent by a Times reporter desperate to demonstrate her own "hipness" to her bosses). What percentage of anyone younger than 65 just picks up and moves to a "hipper" city for the hell of it? People move where their jobs and careers take them. The fact that Las Vegas is #1 on the move-to list is proof of that; nobody moves to Las Vegas because it's cool, because it's the furthest thing from cool that exists on this continent. Worst urban sprawl in the country, poverty, crime, and Celine Dion. What more could a twentysomething possibly want out of life?

[EDINVA]

"So why are you still in Virginia if you'd prefer Charlotte?"

I am not starting my career. I am closer to collecting SS. From a career perspective, I am in DC, I just had the good sense to choose to live in VA some 40 years ago when it was much smaller and more liveable.

My advise re Charlotte was for younger people. There are dozens of smaller cities around the country, including Charlotte and Richmond, that provide better opportunities and more easily managed lifestyles for young people than do Boston/NY/DC/Chicago today.

[Paleo Conservative]

DINKS?

Double Income No Kids