Hip To Be Here?

 by Greg Decker

For the past decade a large coterie of pundits, prognosticators and their media camp followers have insisted that growth in America would be concentrated in places hip and cool, largely in the bluish regions of the country ... It is not just the young who will flock to the blue meccas, but money and business as well, according to the narrative.   Forbes

Unsurprisingly, those presently occupying the Vermont state government are avid followers of this narrative as it paints a pretty picture of the future for the state. The 2007 Vermont Next Gen Workforce Report first discovered Vermont's inevitably prosperous future when it uncovered a gold mine of "creative" allure. 

Based on the report's findings, the only reason Vermont wasn't economically booming was because not enough people knew about the state's unimaginable hipness and coolness.  It goes without saying that the most prudent course of action was to spend a lot of other peoples' money to make sure everybody outside of Vermont knew how awesome things are here.

Yet, after spending untold amounts on "branding" and do-good government programs like Pursue Vermont, the state has not seen a return on the investment. So, where have all these people and businesses been moving to? If not the green hills of Vermont, surely they moved to one of the other hip and cool progressive regions of the country? Not exactly.

"...according to analysis by the Praxis Strategy Group, [migration] has continued to be strongest to the predominately red states of the South and Intermountain West.

Still, the people moving to the South cannot possibly be the highly educated and productive "Creative Class."
Everybody knows that they are moving to places that are hip and cool.  Right?

Well ...

Between 2006 and 2008, the metropolitan areas that enjoyed the fastest percentage shift toward educated and professional workers and industries included nominally "unhip" places like Indianapolis, Charlotte, N.C., Memphis, Tenn., Salt Lake City, Jacksonville, Fla., Tampa, Fla., and Kansas City, Mo.The overall migration numbers are even more revealing. As was the case for much of the past decade, the biggest gainers continue to include cities such as San Antonio, Dallas and Houston. Rather than being oases for migrants, some oft-cited magnets such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago have all suffered considerable loss of population to other regions over the past year."

Comments

[Chris Campion]

Hilariously, the consultants used for some of this study are from Austin, TX, and Madison, WI. If the opportunities were so ripe in VT, why did we have to go out of state to find the expertise to tell us how fantastic VT is a place to do business?

[GreggB]

No way I read this book and it said that prosperity follows dirty hipster artists. So just stock up on unemployed artist types and your state/city/third world nation will prosper. I don't understand how it works as the 'creative class' has yet to actually create anything.
Tax artists and build smart grids with the money and VT will have so much wealth everyone can just sit around making art.

[Skeptical]

Next Gen Consulting 2009-2010 best cities:

1. San Francisco, California
2. Seattle, Washington
3. Boston, Massachusetts
4. Washington, District of Columbia
5. Denver, Colorado
6. Austin, Texas
7. Baltimore, Maryland
8. Portland, Oregon
9. New York City, New York
10. Columbus, Ohio
11. Milwaukee, Wisconsin
12. Charlotte, North Carolina
13. Chicago, Illinois
14. Nashville, Tennessee
15. Jacksonville, Florida
16. Tucson, Arizona
17. San Antonio, Texas
18. Los Angeles, California
19. San Diego, California
20. Houston, Texas

http://nextgenerationconsulting.com/assets/documents/next_cities_press_release-11jun09.pdf

[Vermont Woodchuck]

This list doesn't sound like the top prize places but I can tell you from eyeballs on location, Charlotte, NC isn't going to rocket to the top.

There going to rename the place Charlotte-Dystonia, NC for good reason.

I made sure I did not get caught in that burg, it's hurting and the jobs are not coming back.

[Bill]

Did I read or hear somewhere Vermont has more trust funders per capita than any other state in the union? I guess these well-heeled folks don't think Vermont is cool or hip enough to invest some of that money right here. If they did maybe we would see some job growth. Must be their trust fund managers are not so dumb.