Section » Millennials
Ann Arbor II
Lot of reaction to my post on Ann Arbor’s anti-density development policies. One theme is Ann Arbor can’t be Madison mainly because they are the state capitol and have the two lakes. No question Madison has some assets that Ann Arbor can not replicate. One can argue it’s why they are a city nearly twice as populous. I think it’s harder to argue those unique assets are the reason why the proportion of young professional households in Madison is more than 50 percent greater than Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor needs to go from 8,000 to 13,000 young professional households (2006 data) to have the same proportion as Madison.
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.
College Success Advisers
Readers know that I am concerned about the low graduation rates that characterized almost all of our universities and colleges. The recent Brookings report on demographic changes across the country from 2000-2008 provides data that should worry all of us. In 2008 the proportion of 25-34 year olds with a four-year degree is less than that for 35-44 year olds.
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.
Great Editorials
Two great editorials on our just released report on Michigan’s progress to a knowledge-based economy. One from Derek Melot at the Lansing State Journal titled “Will Mich. gain passion for learning?”. The other from the Kalamazoo Gazette titled “A tale of cool cities and economic revitalization”. Two headlines that get to the essence of what our work is all about. Talent is driving the economy and Michigan will only be prosperous again if it focuses on preparing, retaining and attracting talent.
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.
Paying Attention to Young Talent
Terrific articles on Sunday in both the Grand Rapids Press and the Kalamazoo Gazette on the importance of young professionals to economic growth. Worth reading!
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.
Detroit’s Assets
We spend all of our time bashing the city of Detroit, we forget that it has assets to build from. Three of the most important are Wayne State University, the Henry Ford Health System and the Detroit Medical Center. Tom Walsh in a recent Free Press column calls them Detroit’s new big three. Likely the most important engine to the revitalization of the city.
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.
Is Richard Florida Right?
Thought provoking article in the American Prospect about the work of Richard Florida. It is critical of him on a variety of fronts, but particularly his selling his ideas in speeches and consulting to many small to mid size cities and regions who he now has decided have little or no chance to retain and attract the creative class. Florida in a March, 2008 article in the Atlantic laid out his new thinking that some places in American are going to be winners and some losers in the transition to what he would describe as a creative economy and there is little policy makers can do to effect that. In essence writing off a large proportion of America in terms of participating to any significant degree in the growing and high wage part of the American economy.
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.
Questions for 2010
In my last post I recommended that we ask 2010 candidates “what state would Michigan look like if your economic development strategies worked?”
The other key question I would ask is “what does Michigan need to look like for your kids (or grand kids) to want to live here?” Nearly all will be or are college graduates. Where they decide to live and work will, in large part, determine the future prosperity of the state.
Its not what most candidates are thinking about or what they are talking about. They are under enormous pressure by voters and interest groups to articulate their ideas about today – not tomorrow. But communities that don’t keep their college educated kids won’t be prosperous now or in the future. Its that important.
My guess is if candidates talked with their kids about where they want to live after college they will find that what they are talking about on the campaign trial is of little relevance to their kids decision on where to live after school . Items like what to do with taxes and how to save or restore factory jobs don’t matter very much to future knowledge workers.
If Michigan is going to be prosperous again we need elected officials who are focused on building a state where their kids want to live and work. We need to use the upcoming election to identify who those candidates are.
Why Young Talent?
There are many who question why it is that folks like us place such a high priority on retaining and attracting recent college graduates. Why pick one demographic group over the others? Aren’t they all important?
No one asked that question for the past century when we paid special attention to high paid factory workers. And for more than a century as we continue to pay special attention to farmers. We did both because we thought their success enriched us all.
Today the role that high paid factory workers played for the past century is now being played by mobile talent. Young professionals will do fine wherever they go. But if they choose not to live and work in Michigan its the rest of us who are the losers. Because, to quote Forbes publisher Rick Karlgaard, “where they go, robust economic activity will follow”.
So the overly simplistic answer to why pay special attention to young professionals is: its the economy stupid! We close all our presentation with the tag line: either we get younger and better educated or we get poorer.
Michigan’s demographic trends are that we are aging far quicker than the country and that we are stuck in the mid thirties in college attainment. In a knowledge-based economy, that is a recipe for being one of the poorest states in the nation. An important reason – and the most promising way to reverse those trends – is we have not created the kind of places where our college educated kids and grand kids – and their peers from across the planet – want to live and work.
Some facts from our Young Talent in the Great Lakes report make crystal clear the magnitude of the challenge. Metro Detroit and Grand Rapids have fifty percent fewer young professional households than metro Chicago and Minneapolis. That is a 35,000 household gap in metro GR and a 140,000 in metro Detroit. Its hard to imagine any other demographic group with that kind of disparity.
Why do metro Chicago and Minneapolis matter? They are the most prosperous regions in the Great Lakes. With per capita incomes roughly twelve percent higher than metro Detroit and twenty five percent higher than metro GR. And the major reason for that gap: the proportion of adults with a four year degree. Its by far the single best predictor of prosperity.
The maps in the report dramatically depict why vibrant central cities matter. Young professionals – the most mobile of all demographic groups – before they have kids are increasingly concentrating in central city neighborhoods that are high density, mixed use and walkable. When they have kids they move to the suburbs. But because mobility declines dramatically as you get into your thirties and have kids, its the suburbs of the city they live in, not Michigan’s, where most will raise their kids.
The numbers: in the City of Chicago there are 226,000 young professional households; 43,000 in Minneapolis and St. Paul combined; in Detroit 15,000 and in Grand Rapids its 10,000.
So young professionals are the group we are having the most difficulty getting to live here and they are the most important to future economic success. That is the reason to make them a priority. Somehow we have failed to understand what seems like common sense, that if we don’t create a place where our own college educated kids want to live, we will not have a vibrant economy in the future. Its that simple!
• Copyright 2009 • Twitter: #michiganfuture