At the core Basile – a private sector knowledge-based employer – affirms two central beliefs of ours: 1. That it is talent – not taxes or big government – that matters most to enterprise success. 2. That talent is so important and in such short supply that knowledge-based employers will move to where the talent is rather than the other way around. Conventional wisdom is people move to where the jobs are. In a knowledge-based economy there is growing evidence that enterprises move to where talent is concentrated.

Unless we get thought leaders and policy makers to understand both we have little chance of getting our agenda debated, let alone enacted. And the best way to get them accepted is from employers. What is so unique about the Basile email is that he put what many employers have said to me over the years off the record in writing and then allowed me to distribute widely what he wrote.

That brings me to the push back. Two main items

1. The firm should be in Detroit. Obviously I would prefer that it be in the city. But I do not believe if it were that it would change their recruitment challenge. Are there a small number of young professionals that won’t take a job unless they can walk or bike to it, probably yes. But not at any scale. So I don’t think where a firm is located has much to do with the ability to attract talent. Before the Great Recession I heard the same story for years from knowledge-based enterprises in the city. Available jobs, not enough qualified applicants, applicants not wanting to live/work in the region. Microsoft, along with many Seattle knowledge-based employers are in the suburbs. The outbound commute in Seattle is as crowed as the inbound commute. The notion that the company has to be in the city (or walkable suburb) to be attractive to young professionals does not appear to be the pattern across the country. Central cities are increasingly the new bedroom suburbs where a segment of talent wants to live, not necessarily work. That is what is missing here –  vibrant neighborhoods where talent wants to live, not work – plus the ability to commute by rail.

2. If they would market our assets better talent will come. This is the one critique I didn’t expect. That some of us believe that we have a competitive quality of place today. Should our firms do a better job selling the city/region to their recruits? Absolutely. I’m convinced most employers don’t know the assets to showcase. But if they did would it change at any scale talent’s willingness to move here? Highly unlikely. I agree with Basile when he writes “We don’t have a perception problem, we have a reality problem.” We have a region, in Chris Leinberger’s terminology, which is dominated by driveable suburbanism, not walkable urbanism, in a market where an increasing proportion of mobile talent wants/demands walkable urbanism.

The second is really interesting. It is from Concentrate Media which covers Ann Arbor online. The article is written by Kate Rose who has been a regular contributor singing the praises of Ann Arbor and Michigan as a great place to live and work. But now she has moved to California and she writes about why. It is quite insightful on what Ann Arbor has to offer and what it is lacking. Her agenda for Ann Arbor:

1. Job diversification. I didn’t want to “dump” Michigan. It had so many qualities that I was looking for in a homebase — save one. Selfishly, that turned out to be my career growth. As Gen Y’ers figure out their next career moves, we need to encourage a range of businesses with an enticing array of jobs. Easier said than done, but if this is a wish list, economic livelihood tops it.

2. A dynamic downtown. We lack discovery of new places, and I don’t think the fact that Ann Arbor’s a small town is an excuse. Give us something to explore and keep the chains out. Create more opportunities for innovative and surprising businesses, organizations, events, and entertainment to take root. If Ypsi can hold a puppet-hosted mayoral debate, surely A2 can too.

3. Knock off the “Us vs. Them” development wars. Before I left, I participated in a few meetings where young people discussed development issues coming before council. The tone was hopeful, but felt combative. The general sentiment was that older residents liked how things were, just as they are, and had the time and resources to fight like hell to keep it that way. We need to open the discussion — that’s right, “discussion’, not “argument’. A stronger acknowledgment from city government that young professionals’ interests are being considered would be a welcome start.

Good advice. Jobs and place. Both matter.

This is consistent with my experience with young professionals and college students across the state. I have never been in a discussion about their priority list for Michigan that does not have transit at or near the top. This is a generation where many would like to live without a car. So for many their decision on where to live and work after college includes having great transit. It’s a common feature of many of the cities that are young talent magnets.

Ficano understands this. Transit – particularly rail – is about more than just moving people. It is a economic growth priority. Because where those University of Michigan charrette participants choose to live and work after college will have a lot to do in determining which region are prosperous in the future and which aren’t.

Unfortunately his priority for transit seems not to shared by the Oakland County Executive and Chairman of the Macomb County Commission both of whom wrote editorials for One D on transit as well. (You can find them here.) It’s clear that the historic concerns that haven’t prevented metro Detroit from getting a high quality rail system still exist. Do we really need rail? Can we afford it? Etc.

Ficano is right. As region after region across the country understands, transit is a key ingredient in growing the economy. We cannot afford not to have transit. It’s that important!

I believe that the University of Michigan is a better asset than UW Madison. By creating a quality of place that is more attractive place to live they have leveraged their assets better than Ann Arbor.

We use Madison as a comparison for both Ann Arbor and Lansing/East Lansing both because of the major research university and to take cold weather off the table. Lots of folks think Michigan can’t compete for talent because of the weather, don’t believe it. But in terms of development policy a better model is Portland, Oregon. They have developed the playbook for land use.

Their four decade long strategy has three anchors: a greenbelt to control sprawl, a high density/walkable central city (particularly in their downtown and near downtown neighborhoods) and transit. The result: a city that is both regularly rated one of the “greenest” in the country and a talent magnet. (See this Wall Street Journal article on Portland still attracting young talent even in a down economy. It’s not just jobs that attract mobile talent!)

In environmentally conscious Portland you see high density (yes even tall buildings) development everywhere in and around the downtown. They understand if you want both to be kind to the environment and economic growth the recipe is to limit low density suburban/exurban growth and encourage a high density central city. It’s the way to get folks out of cars and to make transit (particularly rail) financially feasible.

Ann Arbor seems to have convinced itself that it’s good for the environment to restrict growth both outside the city and in the city. But then the only way you can grow is if new workers demanded by new and growing enterprises live further and further away from the city. Which means longer commutes all by car. So much for being kind to the environment.

That assumes that new workers want (or will accept to get the job) to live further and further away from the city. The evidence is an increasing proportion of college educated adults – the workers most needed by the knowledge-based enterprises that Ann Arbor wants to attract – don’t want/won’t accept that kind of low density/long commute living. The trend nationally – that Brookings has labeled bright flight – is a preference for central city living, particularly in high density, mixed use, walkable neighborhoods with transit. That is why vibrant, dense central central city neighborhoods is central to economic growth. Without a larger pool of talent Ann Arbor won’t get the economic growth it wants.

At the very time that the economy is demanding more college grads, the college attainment rate is going down. Not good news either for the economic prospects of the Millennials or the American economy. The 25-34 year olds have a higher proportion that have some college, but no degree. So more are going to college, but fewer are graduating. We need to change that.

I wrote a series of previous posts on the need to demand of higher eduction the same kind of improved outcomes that we have of k-12 education. Those standards, combined with funding following the student, have helped create new schools are getting student outcomes that were thought impossible a decade ago.

One of the innovations that a few new high schools have adopted is taking responsibility for the graduates while they are in college. Two of them – including Ferndale’s University High School  which I am involved with – have hired college success advisers. A coach/counsellor that follows the student from high school to college. As the Free Press noted so far the advisers are helping get college retention rates that are far above that for students from urban high schools. (The article also includes a list of the graduation rates from our public universities.Take a look. Pretty depressing!)

As the article notes we are so pleased with the results we are going to require all the new high schools funded by Michigan Future Schools to have a college success adviser. But ultimately the only way these kind of supports can be provided at scale is when colleges and universities provide these services. The advisers provide the kind of support that universities provide to their scholarship athletes. The question we need to ask our colleges and universities is why aren’t they at least experimenting with this kind of support system for all students as a way of boosting graduation rates.

The State Journal piece goes through our five point agenda and demonstrates how on each the state has been moving in the opposite direction. From supporting higher education to creating welcoming, vibrant places where mobile talent wants to live to developing new leadership that is about moving to the future rather than trying to recreate the past Melot argues that we have come up short.  Worth reading!

The Gazette editorial is just as right on. It makes the case, using data from our report, that for Michigan to be prosperous again central cities matter – particularly Detroit. As they write: “It’s important for residents here and across Michigan to understand that investment in our core cities, east and west, is an investment in a prosperous future for all of us in the years to come.” Central cities – as too many in Michigan believe – are not a part of a long gone past, but of current and future success. That’s because mobile young talent increasingly is concentrating in vibrant central cities of the nation’s big metros. Where they choose to live and work will go a long way in determining which states and regions are prosperous in the future and which are not.

The Press’ article is part of their terrific Michigan 10.0 series. That the issue of retaining and attracting recent college graduates is now on their short list of agenda items that will determine how well Michigan does in the future is in and of itself a sign of real progress. Believe me, five years ago it was on almost no list of important issues facing the state.

As you know, we believe the question “what does Michigan need to look like so our kids choose to live and work here after college?” is one we believe should be asked of every candidate this year. Because that is the agenda the state and it’s regions should be working on as an economic growth priority.

Both articles assert that place matters along with employment opportunities. And that the place that matters most to young professionals is the central city. We couldn’t agree more. A central conclusion of all our research is that talent is what most determines whether a state is prosperous or not and the states that are the most prosperous are characterized by even more prosperous big metros anchored by vibrant central cities.

As Walsh points out they are the city’s three largest non governmental employers. And growing – adding employees and making big investments in their campuses. Health care and higher education are growth industries across the country.  They are a major part of the knowledge-based economy that Michigan and metro Detroit needs to grow to return to high prosperity.  It’s a hard lesson for Michigan to learn but health care and education are key growth sectors – not drags on the economy.

Beyond their direct economic impact on the city the three institutions – in part because of their close proximity to one another in Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood – will be key drivers of creating the kind of urban neighborhoods that the city needs to retain and attract young talent. They are working with the Hudson-Webber Foundation and other funders on a comprehensive strategy to attract 15,000 additional young professionals to the area by 2015. That would roughly double the number of young professionals living in the city.

It’s not pie in the sky. As Walsh points out they are working with a team from Philadelphia that was involved in the transformation of the West Philadelphia neighborhood led by the University of Pennsylvania. Walsh quotes Omar Blaik the team leader: ”The ingredients are here. Now we’ve got to cook the dish. … While everybody is looking at Detroit today and saying, ‘Oh, thank God we are not Detroit,’ I say many people in America are going to wake up 10 years from now surprised that Detroit is rewriting the new chapter of what an American city looks like.”

If he’s right it will boost not just the city but the entire state. A vibrant Detroit is an essential ingredient in recreating a high prosperity Michigan.

As the American Prospect article lays out there are lots of Florida’s ideas that are controversial. Lots of folks think his approach to economic growth is misguided. We will explore some of those issues in future posts. For now I want to focus on the geographic winner and loser question.

We wrote in our  2006 New Agenda report that talent is concentrating in big metros and a few mid size metros with major research universities. And because of that trend (apparently global, not just in the US) that the keys to recreating a high prosperity Michigan are primarily metro Detroit and to a lesser degree metro Grand Rapids and metro Lansing. This doesn’t sit well with most folks in the rest of Michigan. They want their communities to participate in the growing, high wage portions of the national economy as well.

But if our analysis is right, it’s not something that small metros and rural areas can do. They simply don’t have the assets – density being the most important – to create, retain and attract either knowledge-based enterprises or college educated adults at scale. So the new Florida analysis is likely right. That there are many places across the country that are unlikely to succeed– no matter how many resources they throw at it – to create places where talent will concentrate. Florida deserves the criticism that he sold many communities – including in Michigan – an unrealizable growth strategy.

What I think is wrong with his new analysis is that he also seems to writing off many big metros. The fact that Michigan’s three largest metros are not now talent magnets nor do they have the assets needed to become one, doesn’t mean that it can’t change. As we explore in our next annual progress report, Pittsburgh has gone from a declining industrial region to a flourishing knowledge economy. If they can do it, so can our three largest metros.