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Forbes.com wrote
Best Cities For Young Professionals
Matt Woolsey, 06.21.07
Our list was compiled by tracking where the graduates of top universities across the country ended up 10 years after commencement; where the best business opportunities exist; which cities had the most young and unmarried people; and which cities paid young professionals the best.
For attracting young people, it helps to have the biggest university in the country in Ohio State. Columbus did well with the overall young population and the percentage of never-married 20- to 35-year olds, ranking 14th. However, a low score of 27th for businesses helps to push away those in their early 30s–in the Class of 1997 distribution, Columbus ranked 24th.
Found this list quite interesting, we are 23rd just ahead of New Orleans and Cleveland. Any thoughts or surprises here?
I was surprised to think, “Maybe I should go ahead an move” when I saw that picture of San Francisco.
I mean, the research proves it… these cities are better places to live. We should want the finest things right? Live in the best city. Eat at the best restaurants. Have the most beautiful spouse. Earn the most money. Drive the swankest car. Go to the coolest parties. Have the wickedest band scene. Have the most freedom in your work. Be where it is most scenic.
This is starting to feel like fucking programming. Talk, talk, talk, talk… listen, digest, assimilate the programming. More. Better. Top. Coolest. You want it. You want it- you want to create it.
Taste it?
Philosophically, what is going on here? Anyone have a stab at it?
I’m starting to think, based on my skeptical nature, that if so many people want me to consider the coolest cities, and so many people want me to make Columbus cooler…. to climb that list. Maybe I should look at the impetus for that very, very closely.
Take car advertisements. Cars offer freedom, right? Ever been trapped in traffic? How’s your car payment and insurance feel each month- freeing? They keep you in that job you hate? It has been proving that owning a 2nd own precludes building wealth for middle class citizens- yet we all are forced to the suburbs and since mom and dad work on different ends of town and someone has to pick up the kids we are forced to have them. Why are we so often offered something that delivers the exact opposite of what it claims to make possible?
I feel like I’m in a twilight zone over this. Any thoughts on that?
Cincinnati ranked 18th? really?
I’d have to agree that NYC is a great place to be a young professional — it’s where I worked for the first 6 years out of college and I loved it. I can’t imagine settling down there longterm though. It’s way too expensive to live in the city and the commuting lifestyle sucks.
I moved to Ohio after 6 years of that and thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I knew Dayton was too small to keep me for good, but it was still great to have an actual LIFE outside of work again, and to have green spaces, etc. Moving to Columbus almost 2 yrs ago, I feel like I found the perfect fit — big enough city to have the culture and restaurants and hip vibe and tons of things to do, but still a fantastic quality of life and cost of living compared to NY.
Not sure I qualify as quite the “young” professional anymore *sob* but I think Columbus is on track and doing the right things, just needs to keep up the momentum. I could definitely see staying here longterm based on how things are going.
Plus talking about how to make Columbus cool makes no difference.
Having conversations about what is being created in Columbus that is cool will.
I mean… you see Cincy declared as 18th and you say… hmmm…
You see people scratching their noggins over how to make this place look better ala Next Generation and don’t you feel kinda like, “well, that’s just dumb” or “we’re trying… chuckle, ol’ columbus got duped by some fancy consultant… shucks” – I want the same thing you want- for this to be a good thing and develop into AwesomeColumbusCity.
However, I’m beginning to think, since the yawning chasm of silence since the report was presented, that hiring a consulting was the worst thing Columbus ever could have done. It put us into a group of chump cities who have no idea what is really cool about themselves. Who wants to go to a place like that?
I’m thinking hiring Ms. Ryan might have dropped us a few pegs on this list.
Does the “most eligible bachelor” ever create a profile on match.com?
The whole thing wreaks of despiration and lack of ingenuity.
Amen, Brother.
Any among you ever dream of San Fran hiring a consultant for this?
(chirp, chirp)
Brewmaster, I buys you a beer at the CU meetup. Remind me. My mantra is, “I’m not being I jerk, I just forget things.”
Now, how do we get consulted? Admit it was dumb, disband the YP thing, and get busy being cool, not talking about it.
Ok, I am done posting for a while. Goodbye.
I don’t think Rebecca had anything to do with the placement of Columbus on this list. This list was heavily based on the business market and not things like activities, festivals, night life, weather, etc. that may influence YPs to move. This list is the opposite of Ryan’s Next Gen theme “Live First, Work Second”. This list seemed heavily based on salary and business opportunities.
Yeah! If that’s not a stock photo I don’t know what is. I love how they manage to squeeze all sorts of skin color shades into that photo to make sure they include everyone. Even if those people don’t look all that young or hip or anything.
But seriously… I love the Book Loft, but WTF is it doing in place of what should be a nice angle of our skyline? Not that our skyline is that impressive, but still? The Book Loft is not a very good visual representation of our city.
Yeah, these “Top 10″ lists that magazines produce are just a cheap gimmick to sell copies and the cities eat it up since it’s free PR and advertising. While I’d like to think that no one honestly looks at a photo and decides where they want to move, the name recognition does count for something. You see a city’s name popping up in more and more of these types of lists and you start to realize that if Forbes.com thinks it’s cool, then that means it’s probably been cool for 10 years now.
And yeah, I realize that “cool” is a relative term, and hard enough to measure from one person to the next let alone come up with a statistical way to measure and assign a number to a city’s “cool content” but yeah… these things do have a purpose.
Sure, everyone’s got an agenda when it comes to growth and development of something as large as a city of hundreds of thousands of people. That’s nothing new.
Having conversations about what is being created in Columbus that is cool will.
Agreed. I’ve surprisingly found a lot of people who feel the same way. It’s refreshing to know. I’ll have more on this shortly.
I’ve been working on setting up a blog to chronicle my adventures with the YP stuff that I’m involved in. There has been a silence to the public about what’s been going on since the initial research results were released, but there have been some meetings and I think some progress is slowly being made. Of course, we’re talking about a government-created body, so you can’t expect anything to happen immediately (especially when no one on this commitee is getting paid anything (as far as I know)) but I will have something posted up soon.
I’ve been trying to find the time to get a lot of things written. I’ve finally found some time. Ultimately it seems like most people involved are in the same boat with you on the whole consultant research thing, but now that the project has been handed over to the locals we’re seeing some better insight and ideas going forward.
Might have something up this weekend. Stay tuned. 8)
There should be an interview with Rebecca on ColumbusING soon.
I’m excited to see how that turned out.
:D
But seriously… I love the Book Loft, but WTF is it doing in place of what should be a nice angle of our skyline? Not that our skyline is that impressive, but still? The Book Loft is not a very good visual representation of our city.
Could be worse — that shot for Denver was LAME. Ooh, you have a bar (or restaurant) with a patio! It looks like… every other bar (or restaurant) with a patio… :roll:
I think there’s a BIG component of self-fulfillment in these lists (which I think is what you were getting at) — the fact that it’s on a list of “cool places to live” sticks in people’s minds, so when they’re later polled (or writing an article, or voting online, or whatever) about the coolest places to live, the subconscious trigger fires… and out comes the same places over and over again.
To make a change, you need to make real waves. I think Columbus is on the right track for trying to do that, and I just hope the city can keep it up!
Could be worse — that shot for Denver was LAME. Ooh, you have a bar (or restaurant) with a patio! It looks like… every other bar (or restaurant) with a patio… :roll:
It could be the shot of Chicago too. The person in the center of the shot of a bar patio has a yankee’s uniform. :P
Look forward to your report Walker, I was wondering what the latest developments were in the YP department.
I think after reading this I wanted to ask less about “Does Columbus Compare?” and more about “Who the hell are young professionals?” and “Do they raise the quality of life?”
I don’t know. Seems like alot of emphasis is being put on this group of people who are going to become the next grown up core of the world. But what reports like this seem to cleverly leave out is that there is a whole culture of people (who help raise the quality of an area’s life) that get ignored because they don’t fall under the guidelines of being a young professional.
I personally felt like I was being told to think at the 5 or 6 young professional meetings I went to.
I think that other culture I speak of is the group of people who aren’t interested in being told what we can expect.. they are the people who will provide the suggestions and drive to create what we should expect.
I am young. But I don’t want to be called young. I want people to hear my ideas, and I want to listen to others share theirs. I’m professional by taking responsibility for my own life and trying to better those around me. But I don’t want to be called what they consider professional because the people writing these lists equate professional to college grads that have jobs with benefits and are concerned with being at the top of the list.
There is more to life than that. Sometimes the experience of doing is better than just the reward.
To make a change, you need to make real waves. I think Columbus is on the right track for trying to do that, and I just hope the city can keep it up!
Agreed.
Just because I’m curious…. Walker…. could you define “young professional” in your terms.
I ask because I respect your opinion.. and I hate the term.
Maybe you see something in it that I don’t?
It appears to more a list of where the most professional jobs are located. Not sure that make it anything but a list of cities with growing companies.
All I know is, I’ve got a degree. Before I moved here I started sending out resumes, and for the three months after moving here I was hitting the streets with resumes, making phone calls, putting myself up on the internet, and didn’t nail one decent job.
It took me 3 weeks after I graduated in Seattle (#5 on the list) to land a job that paid 35k plus full benefits, vacation time, etc.
The job market in Columbus is tough. Maybe this study has a lot to do with that?
here’s a start…..better public transportation, A CASINO, make our huge festivals the biggest anywhere, more festivals (how about a weekend long rock festival), 315 technology corridor (get it going already), affordable housing, bring in the biz (i’m a firm believer that the more highrises the more powerful a city looks, it’s all about perception and first impressions.) more destinations from skybus, shopping downtown, more modern buildings downtown (no more brick boxes), cooler work atmostpheres (get rid of the cubicles) higher paying jobs, start advertising our city to the world, more hotels, trolley from ohio state to the brewery district (what better way to advertise the city to college students with no cars.) spaceflight at Rickenbacker (anybody heard anything more about this) and find a way to set ourselves apart from every other city instead of copying their ideas. let them come to us for ideas, i.e. arena district. i agree with the rebecca ryan thing, sure she had good ideas, but we should not need to hire somebody to tell us what to do. we need to get together and brainstorm ourselves and create a city for ourselves, and we’d better to it faster, because competitive cities are leaving us in the dust. don’t get me wrong, this city has done ALOT in the past 5-10 years, but it’s not enough in this rat race. just look at every poll and ranking they do one cities and figure out a way that we can rise to the top of them, or at least the top 10, which is very admirable.
I hate the term too. It’s nothing more than a buzzword, and since it’s really just a rebirth of the term “yuppie” it still tends to carry the negative (materialistic) connotations associated with it.
That being said, I try not to get hung up on it. There’s some brainstorming going on to come up with a new term, but that’s really just a matter of marketing. The targeted group is still the same.
My personal definition of that targeted group that our city leaders are so excited about would be “anyone between the age of 21-40 (YMMV) who wants to play an active role in shaping our city”. I think the hangup for most people is probably due to the fact that the white-collar folks are generally the ones who either step up to fill this role, or they’re the first to know about it and first to be asked to step up. I really think the artistic community is welcome at the table (at least most of the tables I’ve been to) but many either shun the “YP” label, or shun the whole established/organizational thing since it is more talking than walking at this point.
Me… i think there’s a time and a place for everything. And I’m trying to be more active in all sorts of things these days, not only to voice my own opinions, but to share the other opinions that I constantly read on this site, other sites, emails, and from hanging out with new people face to face.
PS: I do think that even high-school drop out entrepreneurs should have a seat at the YP table because you never know how much of a cultural and economical impact they’ll have on Columbus.
:idea: