Denver "Cool City" for Young Adults During Recession....But Can The Area Retain This Talent?

William Frey from the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program recently released demographic data showing that the Denver Metro Area had a net gain of more than ten thousand young adults (aged 25 to 34) from 2008 to 2010 making it the number one gaining Metro Area in the U.S. during the Great Recession.   It jumped from a ranking of twelfth in 2005 to 2007 (see chart to left from Brookings).

Frey describes the strong net inflow performance of cities like Denver in the following way:

"To the extent they are moving at all, young adults are headed to metro areas which are known to have a certain vibe—college towns, high-tech centers, and so-called 'cool cities.'...The top three areas [Denver was number 1] and our nation’s capital, arguably, fared relatively well economically during the recession. But all seven are places where young people can feel connected and have attachments to colleges or universities among highly educated residents."

Which brings me to a fascinating conversation I had the other night at dinner with an old friend I used to work with in New York.  My friend, who has lived in the Denver Metro Area for more than 10 years, has top notch professional and academic credentials with many interesting and impressive career experiences.   One thing he told me was that, in his experience, the relatively small size of the Metro Denver employment market leads many talented people to ultimately move on to larger business centers to further their careers.  

Clearly the Denver region is attracting energetic young people who are critical for keeping the area economically vital, creatively vibrant and providing a strong labor talent pool.  However, the big question this raises in my mind is "Can the region attract and/or organically grow enough top tier job opportunities to retain this population as it ages and grows into senior management roles?"

This is a big and critical challenge for the Denver region.

Brookings/Leinberger: The Next Real Estate Boom

The Brookings Institutes's Metropolitan Policy Program continually puts out excellent work.
Christoper Leinberger's recent short article, The Next Real Estate Boom, does an insightful job of weaving together a multitude of ideas and trends into an analysis for holistically tackling many of the most vexing economic and public policy questions faced in the United States today. All of the following and more are discussed in an interrelated way:

1) The increasing demand for walkable, transit-oriented, mixed use neighborhoods
2) The current Great Recession and how to get the economy moving forward
3) Global economic competition
4) Global warming and energy policy
5) Transportation policy and infrastructure investments
6) Demographic trends from the Baby Boomers to Generation Y
8) The emergence of Salt Lake City as a potent economic hub with a unique sense of place (an area of notable concern for this blog)
9) Reforming Fannie and Freddie

Thinking about Metro Denver, this article helped reinforce for me the critical importance of finding a way to move ahead with the full FasTracks program to help the region build a successful future.

Video Clip from Brookings with Mark Muro Talking About Mountain Megas

Regarding my post from August 22 about the Brookings Institute's recent report on the Mountain Megas, I wanted to also link to a video clip of Mark Muro, one of the report's authors (and Policy Director of the Metropolitan Mega Program at Brookings), discussing some of the key findings from the report.

Brookings Releases Report on Mountain Mega Regions Including the Front Range

The Brookings Institution just released an outstanding and very comprehensive new report titled Mountain Megas: America's Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper. The report assesses the emergence of five megapolitan regions in the Intermountain West: the Sun Corridor, Front Range, Wasatch Front, Greater Las Vegas and Northern New Mexico. Each of these regions are also separately profiled. See below for links to these individual profiles.



Megapolitan Profiles:
Sun Corridor »
Front Range »
Wasatch Front »
Greater Las Vegas »
Northern New Mexico »



The report analyzes the demographic, economic and geographic factors which are driving the region's growth and analyzes the trends and forces impacting each of the Megapolitan areas in the region. It also provides many general policy suggestions for improving prosperity in the region.

The report is well worth reading fully but below are few tasty tidbits to whet your appetite.

• According to the report, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Las Vegas and Arizona are rapidly becoming the "New American Heartland as its economy, people, and politics become more central to the nation. Politically, the Intermountain West could be home to several swing states in the 2008 election and in time play the storied “kingmaking” role the Midwest does now."
  

• The report defines the Front Range as "Colorado’s I-25 corridor linking up metropolitan Boulder, Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Collins, and Greeley."



• One of the factors which has held the mega-regions in the Intermountain West back from becoming "World Cities" is the absence of a deep network of international air routes connecting these regions with global destinations. The region, including the Front Range, also performs relatively poorly in measures of air freight shipments and exports per capita.
  


• The report identifies four asset types which play a key role in driving productivity: infrastructure, innovation, human capital and quality places.

• Colorado has three Universities that rank in the top 100 state research institutions: University of Colorado (26), University of Colorado, Denver Health Sciences Center (42) and Colorado State University (55).
  

• With 19% of its work force in critical knowledge industry clusters - financial services, IT, health care and knowledge creation - the Front Range has the highest percentage of any of the five Mountain Megas.

• Labor productivity and per capita income in the five Mountain Megas trail the national averages except in the Front Range which was substantially more productive and had higher income per capita than the other five regions and than the U. S. as a whole.

• 36% of Front Range Residents had Bachelor's degrees in 2006, more than any other Mountain Mega region and well above the national average.

• The federal government should increase its partnership with regional governing entities in the Mountain Megas to improve they key productivity enhancing assets listed above.