Terraforming Columbus

Excellent post by Eddy Monday at columbusING:

So the long wait is over! Rebecca Ryan of Next Generation Consulting gave eager Columbus citizens a sample of her highly anticipated report to help the city figure out how to attract and retain young talent….

My biggest turn off to the city’s initiative is the scope and approach. By limiting the discussion to Young Professionals you alienate the young talent that doesn’t consider itself “professional”. In addition to the entry level employee that works at Nationwide, we’re loosing the budding singer/songwriter, hip hop artists, and sculptor that honed their talents in Columbus. By limiting the discussion to Young Professionals it makes it sound like those non professional voices don’t matter. While they may not have the disposable income, this young non professional talent is more valuable to Columbus’ image than the YP’s. The young non professional talent is what gives a city its buzz. When a city is known to have an amazing music scene or art scene it makes the 30 and under professionals and hipsters flock. Remember this generation of YP’s grew up listening to Public Enemy and Fugazi!

One of Ms. Ryan’s suggestions was that the Young Professionals sell the city to the rest of the country via video testimonials. The idea is to use their words to sell their vision to their peers across the country. I can’t begin to tell you how BAAAD of an idea this is. If the testimonials she’s proposing are as stimulating as the ones she shared with us at the Mershon auditorium on Wednesday night then we might as well start importing tumbleweed by the ton.

He is exactly right. Well, mostly.

Young professionals will not get excited about living with and amongst other YPs. They want to be around the cool bohemians, in part because they’re insecure about their own coolness, and they want to be part of a scene when they’re done with the 9 to 5. Gays and poor artist types are what make cities attractive to YPs.

The question is, what makes cities attractive to these bohemians? I don’t have a finished answer, but I know three things:

1) The city should have some inherent attraction. New York and San Francisco have it. Seattle & Portland have it. Columbus not so much. But Austin, while pleasant, doesn’t really have it, and yet they overcame it. How does Columbus do this? OSU has to be a big part of the answer.

2) Housing stock- pre-war is best, housing built after that is not so good. Witness Victorian & German Villages. A problem for Columbus is that there’s not a lot of the good stuff concentrated in one area. It can be simulated, but it’s difficult.

3) Light rail doesn’t really enter into it. Especially for a smallish city like Columbus.

But attracting Bohemians in order to attract YPs is a long-term plan. It’s like terraforming Mars. The lichens have to do their thing before you can introduce the grasses. The city can’t market people into thinking the city is cool. It’s got to be cool. The ecosystem of coolness, like any ecosytem, is chaotic. A government will find it very hard to control it. But it can go some way to provide a conducive environment, and then wait.

And yes, video appeals from young CPAs and MBAs is a horrible idea. They might actually cause people to flee.