There is an important article in the NYTimes today titled "Cities Compete in Hipness Battle to Attract Young" which, in the closing paragraph, briefly summarizes what I feel has been one of NEO leaderships' greatest weaknesses: “The real issue was, is your city open to a set of ideas from young people, and their wish to realize their dream or objective in your city,” he said. “You could go out and build bike paths, but if that’s not what your young people want, it’s not going to work.” I'll point to several examples of where I believe "our city" establishment, whatever you view that to be, in our obsession with regionalism, does not listen to the creative class, which is a broad population that largely defines our hipness.

For example, Brewed Fresh Daily is a very hip garden for insight-building that develops excellent dialog on social issues important to the creative class. When a topic touches on local command and control issues, like Voices and Choices, BFD often draws in some regional powers that be, but usually only in defense of their positions and stakeholders. I can't recall many situations where a community leader has "listened" to others on BFD and added to discussions in a proactive and constructive way. I believe the establishment hears what is being said there, in that they monitor BFD closely, but they participate to command and defend rather than analyze and build. While it is good they at least hear what is being felt and said by the creative class, and I believe they model their behavior based on what they absorb, we are still lacking a real listening and communicating component with the establishment in this space which offers transformation of the region.

As another example, when Gen-X expert and CEO of Next Generation Consulting Rebecca Ryan came to the Cleveland City Club last September to speak about her experiences analyzing opportunities for Akron and all of Northeast Ohio to better retain and attract the creative class (podcast here), the last person to stand-up to "ask a question" was the Cleveland Foundation's Brad Whitehead, who didn't ask a question of our guest speaker but rather promoted Voices and Choices as the way we are going to have dialog about transformation in this region, also pointing out one of the greatest challenges was getting Gen-Xers to participate and insisting if they want to be heard they must go to Voices and Choices. He hadn't really listened to what Rebecca had just been saying, which was that Gen-Xers don't want to be told what to do and how... they don't think why but why not.

As it turned out, Voices and Choices was a completely different process from what Rebecca does with her analyses, and focused on a very different scope than Rebecca suggested we should focus on, and Voices and Choices led to a very different outcome than developing a micro list of targeted recommendations for enhancing the region's attractiveness to the creative class. They were not mutually exclusive, and we would be much better off as a community if we had undertaken both approaches, or integrated Rebecca's work as a subset of the Voices and Choices dialog.

What the NEO establishment did do, around that time, was start an additional command and control campaign called "Believe in Cleveland", immediately panned as "be leavin' Cleveland", which was the Plain Dealer and establishment's half-brained, half hearted, now dead attempt to do the opposite of what Rebecca recommends. This failed because, as the NYTimes uncovered in their article referenced here, the Gen-X are much more trusting of their own networks than they are of any marketing campaigns", not to mention the Believe in Cleveland campaign really sucked... wonder how much money was wasted on that mistake on the lake.

A year of command and control later, have we better positioned Cleveland to compete in the "hipness battle" to attract the college-educated 25- to 34-year-olds, a demographic group increasingly viewed as the key to an economic future, which Rebecca pointed out and the NYTimes writes "are likely to choose a location before finding a job. They like downtown living, public transportation and plenty of entertainment options. They view diversity and tolerance as marks of sophistication." My observation is we've done some things right, but not enough right things and not right enough.

The NYTimes article reports on a study by the Metropolitan Atlanta Chamber of Commerce showing: "...from 1990 to 2000 the number of 25- to-34-year-olds with four-year college degrees in the city increased by 46 percent, placing Atlanta in the top five metropolitan areas in terms of growth rate, and a close second to San Francisco in terms of overall numbers. Charlotte, N.C. had a growth rate of 57 percent." "Atlanta did particularly well with young, educated blacks — a boon for employers seeking to diversify their ranks." A woman they interview describes it as “the city of the fearless.” "Sam A. Williams, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, said, “You can’t fake it here,” “You either do it or you don’t.”"

 We are just faking it here, when it is time to start doing it. My recommendation to the establishment is to take around 3% of the $3 million that was spent on Voices and Choices, or 0.5% of one year's $20 million take from the new arts cigarette tax levy, and give Rebecca $100,000 or so to expand upon the extensive work she has already done in this region and in Cleveland, with a focus now on Cleveland or more broadly Cuyahoga County, to help us start winning the hipness battle to compete for the young.

As Rebecca pointed out, in her City Club presentation, "We don't have a strong region unless we have a strong Cleveland - part of what makes Akron cool is Cleveland. A stronger Cleveland makes for a stronger region." We seem to have lost that realization, in all this regionalism focus, and that has left Cleveland weak. The analyses and initiatives underway today and planned for the future for the region offer great opportunity to improve on this, but we do not yet have a holisitic vision focused on the interests of the next generation and our greatest asset, being the city of Cleveland.

I know the immediate reaction to this recommendation will be "not invented here" and my response is we need many dashboards and perspectives, from here and from world-class experts in subject matter from elsewhere, and we should spend 5X that amount on other analytics in addition to Rebecca, from here and elsewhere, each year.

I welcome the perspective of other on this, if you have any related ideas, but first consider this last reference to the NYTimes article: "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." I don't think we can afford to be hurting any more than now in another decade!

To refresh my memory of Rebecca's talk at the City Club, and hear exactly what Brad Whitehead had to say in conclusion, I listened to it again on the podcast and took down some notes, which I include below as some highlights from her presentation and Q & A.  

Developed countries must compete in an innovation-based economy. Worldwide we are facing a shortage of skilled talent... declining demographics. Psychographics - buying behavior of young professionals - puts quality of place as highly as quality of job. Places in world where young professionals want to live is becoming global - cluster where high percentages of knowledge workers live - US is 11th in worldwide list of countries where knowledge workers live. What's at stake - how are we going to become a magnet for talent in Cleveland? From focus groups of young professionals in Cleveland:

Learning - education - is number one issue and all respondents said K-12 system must be corrected for Cleveland to survive -

Reflections of young professionals that Cleveand leadership is risk adverse - should be clearing hurdles and making opportunities but young professionals see the opposite - the doors and meetings are closed - especially true for transplants and boomerangers.

Homegrown young professionals said if you are from Cleveland you may never leave your neighborhood - but when Townies cluster among themselves you lack "genetic diversity" - need to pepper population with transplants - need place at table for diversity.

Young professionals talked about entrepreneurs and Cleveland not being failure friendly - for those who are not entrepreneurs we need a thick layer of opportunities - broaden and deepen layers of opportunity to retain talent.

In every community there is a tension between establishment - people who feel entrenched and attached to status quo - vs. movement, which is anyone asking if it could be better. Problem found in communities where establishment is always asking why and movement is discouraged from asking why not. There must be a healthy dialog between establishment and movement... the people at the table with full energy. But, movement needs connections and relationships and wisdom of establishment.

Young professionals must take charge. And must vote around issues, and be politically active.

 Viewpoints on our "Genetic Diversity"?

Social capital - racism is an issue in this community and innovation is not segregated - it is clear much innovation has come through cross pollination - like hip-hop is a $ multi-billion multi-cultural industry. Cleveland looks diverse but it is questionable how well we leverage that. Young professionals see social capital is the #1 issue and look for diversity.

 Co-chair of 20/30 views there's lots of good here. How do we market that?

 25% of the folks here don't want to leave - but most communities market a city based on why visit rather why live here - find out what the customer wants, build it and sell it to them.

Gen-X want to live in mixed environments - don't want to live in homogeneous community.

Types of housing options?

Mixed use with affordability - Gen-X have high debt load from education - in gentrification if building only for empty nesters with high wealth you will not serve Gen-X - they are single longer - want stroll districts and walkable communities - need to build for both empty nesters and Gen-Xers.

Attendee pointed out that there weren't a lot of the establishment leaders at the presentation. Rebecca responds maybe we didn't send paper invitations?

Rebecca suggests more issue driven dialog. 

Points to REALNEO and our online dialogs - use technology to have these conversations. But communities must have bandwidth and technology - who do you include and exclude.  Young professionals want to work online.

 We don't have a strong region unless we have a strong Cleveland - part of what makes Akron cool is Cleveland. A stronger Cleveland makes for a stronger region.

Brad Whitehead stands up at the end of the talk to make commercial for Voices and Choices and says one of the greatest challenges is getting Gen-Xers to participate so if you want to be heard go to Voices and Choices.