Will Gen Y stay in Victoria? Ideas from "Young Jobseekers"

[Ms. B. Havin]

Interesting article in the New York Times about Gen-Y workers: [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/fashion/06Work.html?ex=1346731200&en=cba6786d559a7f78&ei=5 090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss:be318]What Do Young Jobseekers Want? (Something Other Than the Job)[/url:be318].

Some snippets:

Sixty-five percent of 1,000 respondents aged 24 to 35 who were asked by the Segmentation Company, a division of the marketing consultant Yankelovich, said they preferred to “look for a job in the place that I would like to live,” rather than “look for the best job I can find, the place where it is located is secondary.”

They also told researchers that places must be safe, clean and green. The most-cited quality was tidiness and attractiveness (78 percent) followed by “will allow me to lead the life I want to lead” (77 percent).

Urban leaders are increasingly courting young workers, because as baby boomers retire, Gen Y will have to fill the gap. Across the country, cities are scrambling to become the place that recent grads want to be.

The "safe, clean and green" thing is interesting. "Tidiness and attractiveness" sounds a bit too "second life"-ish for me, but the two don't have to be in a deadly embrace. Things can be attractive without being too tidy, and tidy doesn't amount to attractiveness if it isn't at least a bit ...loose. Take reporter's remarks with a grain of salt ...tidily.
And:

How to join that list [of 14 urban areas in the US that saw more young workers move in than move out]? “That’s the question all our members are asking,” said Carol Coletta, the president and chief executive of CEOs for Cities, a Chicago-based association of urban leaders.

Her group financed the Yankelovich study, titled “Attracting College-Educated Young Adults to Cities.” Its advice? Spread the word that you are, in the words of the report, “clean, safe and green.” Those qualities won’t seal the deal, but without them, this age group won’t even look.

(Edit: with that in mind, Victoria's downward reputation spiral in the matter of open drug use and mentally ill people on the streets isn't doing much to help it economically -- and not just in terms of scaring tourists, although that's the limit of much of the traditional thinking.)

This philosophy is leading cities to market themselves aggressively to young workers. Orlando, for instance, paid for its own investigation to find out what they want. The results convinced the city council to authorize $1.1 billion in July to build an arts center, an event center and to upgrade a sports arena.

Boston’s mayor set up a task force to poll young adults about their needs, and intends to have their answers inform his development plan.

Memphis and Philadelphia, in turn, have created programs (called Mpact in Memphis and Innovation Philadelphia) that woo college students and young professionals, in the hope that they will feel socially welcome and politically connected, and stay.

Imagine if Victoria did anything even remotely like this... Boston's mayor has a development plan??, and this plan will be informed by the results of a poll of young people??? Orlando will spend over a billion dollars on an arts centre, an event centre, and a sports arena upgrade?!?? Pinch me, is there a parallel universe out there, of which I knew nothing?

[Mike K.]

...and to boot us in the face a little more, isn't our youth council controlled by individual(s) that don't care what the youth have to say and insist that their (adult) agendas are the way to go?