Generation "Y" and the city

[Bozo alert: I screwed up the original post here, and tried to recover it, so if this differs from what you remember, that's what happened. BPB]

The 9/26/2008 Plain Dealer prints a letter to the editor from Rob Pitingolo of Euclid:

The news that Eaton Corp. has chosen Beachwood for its new headquarters comes as a major disappointment to young people in Greater Cleveland.

Generation Y is growing less interested in suburban culture. We want to live and work in the city core; we want the excitement of urban life; and we want to give Cleveland a chance. But in the spirit of "regionalism," Mayor Frank Jackson and city leaders seem almost indifferent to companies that move jobs to the
suburbs.

In the next few years, thousands of students will graduate from Northeast Ohio's universities. For many of them, the decision to abandon the suburbs has already been made; the choice is no longer between Cleveland and its suburbs,
but rather between Cleveland and some other city. If Cleveland's leadership
continues to let companies and jobs slip from the city core, Generation Y will
become gradually less interested in both Cleveland and "the region."

I must say that I'm amused by Mr. Pitingolo 's idea that his "generation" represents a dramatic change from all the previous generations in its noble dislike of the suburbs. I don't think that all of these recent college graduates are really going to "abandon" the suburbs permanently, no matter how unattractive they might seem when one is young, single and childless. I think most people in our society, generation "Y" or not, still believe that the best environment for raising children is a single family home with a nontrivial yard, and that still means suburbs.

For that matter, I'd be very interested to know exactly what he means by generation "Y", other than "everyone who graduated from college around the same time I did".

Nevertheless, I can't argue with his basic point: if more people are desiring to live in actual central cities, then a region with a declining central city is at a disadvantage, and a transfer of economic strength from the central city to the suburbs is a net loss for the region, not just for the city.

I doubt that the Mayor and other city political figures were really "indifferent" to Eaton leaving the city. They certainly did more than nothing, although maybe they could have done more. It's hard to know whether they did "enough" without knowing all the details, and nobody seems to be spilling.

Maybe Mr. Pitingolo should be delivering his message to Eaton itself instead of to Cleveland. I'd be willing to bet that the commutes of everyone on the Eaton executive team are going to be shorter to Beachwood than they are to downtown, and I'd also bet that said team would find it difficult to believe that anyone would really find the downtown location superior to the suburban location.

Labels: cities, Cleveland, generation Y, suburbs

 

¶ 9/26/2008 08:30:00 PM 3 comments

 
Notes on an overheard conversation

I'm no suburbia basher but ... I am amazed that people who work and live in the suburbs and rarely go into downtown Cleveland are amazed that on those occasions that they do go downtown, there doesn't seem to be much going on there.

If they never go, why do they think that anyone else is going to be there?

I suppose that this is a variant of the Chryssie Hynde syndrome as expressed in "My City Was Gone": you leave Ohio because it's too lame for words, then you get mad because the people you left behind didn't maintain it to your standards in your absence. 

¶ 9/02/2008 04:07:00 PM 0 comments