Young Phoenix
An interesting report, The Young and Restless and the Nation's Cities, came out recently from the City Observatory think tank. The premise is straight-forward:
The young and restless — 25 to 34-year-olds with a bachelor's degree or higher of education, are increasingly moving to the close-in neighborhoods of the nation's large metropolitan areas. This migration is fueling economic growth and urban revitalization…. Businesses are increasingly locating in or near urban centers to better tap into the growing pool of well-educated workers and because these center city locations enable firms to better compete for talent locally and recruit talent from elsewhere.
The top gainers of this coveted demographic from 2000 to 2012 are what you would expect: Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Boston, Silicon Valley, New York, the Research Triangle and Seattle.
But some among the leaders are cities against which Phoenix should benchmark itself and ought to be able to compete with: Denver, Austin, the Twin Cities and Columbus.
Instead, by a critical metric metropolitan Phoenix comes in 45th. Behind Orlando, Birmingham, Rochester and Indianapolis, hardly cities one would associate with urban cool.
26