WSJ.com: "If you were a recent college graduate in a recovering economy launching a career, looking for a mate or both, where would you choose to live?
Predicting cities that will emerge as post-recession meccas for the young is easy to argue about, but impossible to forecast empirically. Whether you prefer hip, casual Austin, Texas, over the cosmopolitan allure of New York City is partly a matter of personal taste. Still, we asked six experts which 10 cities will emerge as the hottest, hippest destinations for highly mobile, educated workers in their 20s when the U.S. economy gets moving again."
8 comments:
This was a fascinating article to read for many reasons. I thought that, with New York, LA would be near the top of that list, but it wasn't even there! Maybe I have that bias because I'm in theater design (and hope to one day work in film), but I've met a LOT of people who want to move either to LA or San Fransisco. On the flip side of that, I can definitely see DC as being a choice new destination. With people our age becoming more and more conscious of politics and the world around us, being in the center of all the change seems to be very tempting. And the city getting safer and better every year can't hurt.
Interestingly enough, until recently my older brother was planning on moving to Seattle. Several of his friends already have. Portland did confuse me though. I don't know anyone who's moved there, or even talked about it. I've never heard of it's reputation before.
I am surprised to find that LA is not even mentioned on the list. It's hard to imagine that coming from a school where almost have the graduating classes are always migrating there. Granted, it's pretty expensize there, but is it really worse than New York City? Seattle was no surpise, however. It appears in the past few years major companies in that area have been college scouting, causing hundreds of 20-somethings to move there with a job offer usual in hand with a high-end company like Microsoft. The only city slightly surprising on the list was Wasington, D.C. I feel most young people who move there are on the move in politics, but I cannot imagine it as a job center with amazing profits, but maybe I'm just biased about that city and it's attributes.
I'm actually surprised that New York fell below Seattle and DC. I agree that Washington seems to appeal just to jobs in politics, and I don't understand why the general person would move there post-college. In response to Annie, those cities in California seem to me to be places that a lot of people do indeed want to move to in an ideal situation, but it may not always be practical. I got the impression that the article was trying to predict where people will actually migrate to.
Seattle, New York, and to an extent DC didn't surprise me as being on this list. The one city that did surprise me was Austin. My aunt and cousin moved there in the past year or two, and when I visited, there didn't seem to be anything particularly special about the city: it's large, but otherwise like any other city with sprawling suburbs. However, the rest of the cities listed seem quite reasonable.
This article was kind of a reminder of how narrowly we look at the world sometimes. I expected LA to be on this list, because it seems like that is where half a class goes after graduating from the SOD. However, CMU drama graduates are a very, VERY small portion of the young people that enter the real world after college. I have not visited most of the cities on this list; it would be interesting to see Portland or Austin to see what the big appeal is.
I love that they included Austin in this list. In Oklahoma and Texas, Austin is where you go to find some culture for the weekend. Austin is home to more live music than any other city in the world, so for many of us it would not be a bad place to find a job. I used to go there every summer for Austin City Limits, and I have never been to a city with a more vibrant artistic community, who welcomes strangers and allows for students and artists to live without breaking the bank. Keep Austin Weird.
Portland, Ore? Really? All the other cities didn't shock me but Portland. I just never would have thought. Overall it was really intriguing article. I never thought that "my generation" was very mobile? But I guess it makes a lot of sense. I am so glad I am in school right now and not trying to get a job in real society, that would be the most scary thing ever.
I guess that being in a conservatory-style school with a focus on drama has skewed my view... but I was shocked that New York, LA, and Chicago were not the top three. I guess that not every job revolves around being around lots and lots of people.
It is very interesting to see some of the cities on the list that I would have never expected. I know people in that "right-out of college" age who have gone to all of these cities except for Portland. I have never been to Portland, but I had not idea that it was such a big draw for that age group.
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