CNN: Unfashionable cities trying to create cool
CNN: Unfashionable cities trying to create cool
CNN July 14, 2004 home page link: Cities, states try to lure young professionals
The article focuses on programs in four cities actively seeking a younger, more creative, entrepreneurial population:
Michigan leads with its Cool Cities initiative to attract the creative class.
Philadelphia has a civic leadership and jobs program to retain its graduating students.
Memphis is investing in its citywide fiber optic network and music scene to lure a younger crowd.
Cleveland has an out-of-state-university summer internship program in which students stay with Cleveland families to get to know how cool the city really is.
It’s not easy. Bill Frey of the Brookings Institution in Washington DC found that cities with warmer climates and lower cost of living gained the most 25 to 34-year-olds from 1995 to 2000, including Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix and Denver…
Affordability is fundamental to CoolTowns, along with jobs and entertainment. However, if all things are equal, cities with warmer climates will always win out because the outdoors are included in the entertainment category – a huge advantage. Colder-climate cities have to work that much harder and providing stellar nightlife – like Manhattan, Chicago, Seattle, and smaller towns like Ann Arbor and Ithaca.
About The Author
It’s been an ongoing issue here in Cleveland on how to stop the brain drain. The odd thing is that they keep focusing on young professionals, people just out of college, when I think they really should be thinking of an older demographic, specifically young families, who have maybe lived in bigger, cooler, and more expensive cities after college but are now looking for a place to settle down. Cleveland, with its extended suburbia, affordable housing, etc I think is more suited to being a CoolFamilyTown than a CoolTown for the younger crowd who would be more interested in entertainment and nightlife.
CoolTowns + world class schools = CoolFamilyTowns. There are towns where the entire community converges around Walmart as their town center, as the lifeblood of their economy and social interaction – scary isn’t it? It’s also bad for the economy. Just imagine if the center were K-12 schools instead. How? Some ideas here.