In the news: Seattle vs. Cleveland: And the winner is…

Seattle. Yawn.

Brain-Gain Cities Attract Educated Young (Washington Post cover story)
By Blaine Harden, Nov. 9, 2003 (link expires Nov. 23)
First of two articles: Seattle: In a Darwinian fight for survival, American cities are scheming to steal each other’s young. They want ambitious young…

Of course it’s Seattle, since the city encourages job creation through its major universities; focuses on cutting edge entertainment, music and recreation; remains young (it’s rainy weather makes it the anti-retirement city); kept its long-ago entrepreneurs happy (ie Bill Gates and Paul Allen) yada yada yada…

…and the loser is Cleveland, still losing talent every year. It just isn’t a very happening place to be after college. Maybe it’s because most of its rust-belt era leaders are still in charge, as the article suggests? See tomorrow’s blog.

It’s getting rather depressing to hear how these behemoth cities like Cleveland can’t turn their giant ships around. Small/rural towns are much more nimble, and their ‘economic garden fields’ (defined acreages where entrepreneurs are located) are smaller too, thus easier to ‘fertilize’. Big cities’ ‘economic garden fields’ are enormous – if only they’d focus on tending to one smaller economic garden (ie a few entrepreneur/gazelle-oriented city blocks) and growing from there rather than trying to fertilize the whole darn city/downtown and gaining little momentum. Of course, this can work with small towns too…

Just as large, slow-moving corporations spark innovation and new growth through skunkworks operations, so too can cities and towns through investing in skunkworks neighborhoods.

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neilkt