Stumbled on this interesting report from a few of months ago that looks at what cities attract college graduates. According to data assembled by the think tank City Observatory, “The number of college-educated people age 25 to 34 living within three miles of city centers has surged, up 37 percent since 2000, even as the total population of these neighborhoods has slightly shrunk.” Why is this significant? Well, because the movement of young people and the places that attract them can help provide “a map of the cities that have a chance to be the economic powerhouses of the future,” the article asserts.
The economic effects reach beyond the work the young people do, according to Enrico Moretti, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of “The New Geography of Jobs.” For every college graduate who takes a job in an innovation industry, he found, five additional jobs are eventually created in that city, such as for waiters, carpenters, doctors, architects and teachers.
“It’s a type of growth that feeds on itself — the more young workers you have, the more companies are interested in locating their operations in that area and the more young people are going to move there,” he said.
So what cities will be the economic powerhouses of the future? Not Dallas, apparently. The cities that have been successful at attracting college grads include Denver, San Diego, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Nashville, Salt Lake City and Portland, Ore. Dallas is cited in the article as a city whose youth population is growing more slowly. Our peers in that category include Detroit, Atlanta, Memphis, Charlotte, and Raleigh.
Why are people choosing a place like Denver over Dallas? Mountains, sunshine, jobs in tech, and “perception of cultural cool,” stoked by microbreweries, bike-sharing, and liberal attitudes towards marijuana and same sex-marriage. Now, Dallas will never have mountains, but it might be worthwhile to keep some of these factors in mind as we talk about building a highway through the little green space we do have. And, as I’ve mentioned before, Denver is also notable for its aggressive and ambitious investments in public transit.
Dallas did rank well in one category, though. It has been successful at attracting young people to its urban core. In other words, Dallas isn’t doing a great job attracting young people, but when young people do move here, they move to places like Uptown. It doesn’t take a degree in economics to see what this is all implying. If Dallas wants to compete in the future, it needs to figure out how to develop into a city that has a more vibrant, cohesive urban core.
