david zach's journal

« In Ruins by Christopher Woodward | Main | News Channel to target young & hip »

October 13, 2003

Young Professionals: cool vs. continuity?

Styling.gif
The Christian Science Monitor has an article on A Tale of Cool Cities in its October 8th edition. It's all about how to make cities attractive to the young, cool and talented. Cities and their affiliated organizations are falling all over themselves to roll out the carpet, and dance floors, to make the youngsters feel welcome and cool in the process.

Here in this city we've got YPM: Young Professionals of Milwaukee. They're a few months over 2 years old and boast some 2200 members. A big part of their pitch is to play up how cool Milwaukee is. Their website, a subsection of the Metro Milwaukee Association of Commerce MMAC.org has lots of references to the cool lifestyles of the young and the busy. With over 50% of these members still single, it's quite interesting that it's never formally mentioned that a lot of them belong because it's one of the best chances they've got for meeting other professional singles. Maybe that wouldn't be "professional?"

Forbes Magazine also recently ran their Best Cities for Singles survey in their June 5th edition. (Milwaukee ranked 25th.)

This is all quite fascinating and I have to admit I wish there'd been something like YPM here in Milwaukee back when I was, in fact, a young professional. Now that I'm 46, it's both puzzling and amusing the way employers and chambers are playing to this crowd. It's both puzzling and amusing the way employers and chambers seem to have blanket assumptions about the middle-aged constituents and don't cater to them as much any more. Is it because we're not cool?

One of the lead characters for the "young professional" mantra is Richard Florida. The author of The Rise of the Creative Class, he promotes the 3 Ts: Talent, Tolerance and Technology. If you have these three in a community, your young people are more likely to stay. My suggestion is to add a fourth one: Tradition. The first three without the sense of continuity will not build a community. When they're tired of being cool, (and from what I can see from some distance...cool takes a lot of energy) if you don't offer something of more lasting value, you won't have the commitment to make the community actually work and thrive over time. Commitment may sound boring, but it gets the job done, repeatedly.

And, maybe that's my point. Most of these young professionals, despite their best efforts, are going to eventually find themselves as middle-aged professionals. The "young" part of "professional" is quite temporary. Do these cities need to give better attention to the youthful need for cool? Absolutely. Are they paying too much attention to fads, and not enough to principles? You bet. Scratch the surface of a young professional, and you'll find a middle-ager waiting to happen.

I once read that the biggest surprise that will ever happen in your life is old age. Middle age was a bit unexpected too.

Another thing I once read is that, when thinking about how the parents of youthful rebels eventually became more open and accepting of all the changes those rebels brought into modern society, what we had thought was wisdom was actually exhaustion. Whether talking about exhausted parents or exhausted organizations, the results are still the same.

Posted by dmzach

View by Category

Recent Entries