Author Archives: DANTH

Quick Stats Website Pages

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An essential part of a successful business recruitment program is making it easy for “walk-in” prospects to find the information they want about your downtown and its available business locations. Today, the first thing that these potential walk-ins probably do is conduct an information search on the Internet, looking at the websites of the municipality and local economic development organizations. Unfortunately, too many of these websites do not provide the information these business prospects need or they have it buried so many layers down that it is hard to find. The result is that many tenant prospects are turned off by their frustrating search experience and they then shift their attention to other communities where they can easily find the information they need.

DANTH, Inc.’s Quick Stats Website Pages can help your organization remedy this situation by:

  • Assembling the types of information downtown business prospects are most likely to look for, whether they are professional corporate site locators or small independent operators
  • Creating a single summary Quick Stats webpage where essential information points (e.g., population, income, office workers, parking, cinema patrons, traffic counts, etc.) are provided and can be quickly digested
  • Providing links on the summary Quick Stats page where the prospect can go to obtain more detailed information about a particular point
  • Providing types of useful information that goes beyond the usual census data and cannot be obtained easily elsewhere
  • Providing a “how to” guide for small independent operators
  • Formulating and providing your downtown’s business location value proposition.

You can view the Quick Stats Page we did for the Morristown Partnership here.

A Quick Stats project is affordable and provides a big bang for your buck. For more information, contact David Milder at 718-805-9507 or [email protected].

Small Downtowns Succeed Not By Growing A Lot Bigger, But By Becoming A Lot Better

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Posted by N. David Milder

Introduction

My work, a few years ago, on two small towns with populations under 2,800 has reinforced my feeling that our understanding of what makes a downtown successful is dominated by a paradigm that, while suitable for large districts, just does not seem to be as applicable to small or medium-sized downtowns. I fear that attempts to impose that paradigm on smaller downtowns have led to many dreadful revitalization strategies and plans. In this article I will work toward formulating my view of what the paradigm for a successful small downtown might be, hoping this exercise will stimulate other economic and community development professionals to follow suit.

The Successful Large Downtown Paradigm

Successful large downtowns, according to my understanding of the dominant paradigm, which I described in my 1987 article on downtown crime, have the following characteristics (1):

  • High Multi-functionality. They are multi-functional with a mix of attractive retail shops, restaurants, bars, coffee houses, professional offices, corporate offices, government offices, hospitals, courts, rail and bus stations, hair and nail salons, gyms and spas, museums, cinemas, concert halls, theaters, public spaces, residences, hotels, residential buildings, etc.
  • High Density. These functions are clustered in a dense, compact area and a lot of the development is vertical
  • High Pedestrian Traffic. The multi-functionality sparks a lot of multi-purpose visits and pedestrian trips. The district’s density and compactness help make them comparatively short and easy
  • High Energy and Fast Pace. The density and wide choice of activity venues combined with the strong pedestrian flows, stimulates a sense of high activity and fast pace that at times is even deemed electric or exciting.

Trying to Apply It to a Small Downtown

Size is the defining difference between large and small downtowns. Since multi-functionality and density have almost definitional associations with size, they may be expected to be lower in smaller downtowns. Similarly, pedestrian traffic may be expected to be much lower in smaller downtowns because of reduced multi-functionality and density as well as probably smaller trade area populations. Levels of energy and pace can also be expected to be low in small downtown since they are dependent on multi-functionality, density and pedestrian traffic. However, saying all that leaves little or no basis for explaining why a small downtown is successful and not just small: it has, almost by definition, far less density, multi-functionality, pedestrian traffic, far less energy and a much slower pace that the largest downtowns. What is it then that makes a small downtown successful?  Applying or trying to tailor the large downtown paradigm to the small certainly does not seem to get anywhere meaningful.

The Importance of an Attractive Downtown Setting with Fewer People

Searching for a better approach to understanding the major characteristics of a successful small downtown, I happened upon the results of a large national survey done for the National Association of Realtors that showed 18% of the respondents preferred living in small towns and 22% preferred living in rural areas (2). That means that very significant portions of our population prefer living in towns and areas that are not densely populated or developed. They do not like crowds or living close to other people. To me, these facts suggest that whatever the economic needs of a small downtown, if they are met with too much population growth and increased development density, then the downtown probably will not be considered a success in the eyes of its local user population. Of course, too much density and growth can also be of great concern to large downtown user populations. Where they are very likely to differ is in the definitions of how much is “too much.”

The Importance of an Attractive Downtown Setting with Low Energy and Slow Pace

Why else do people prefer the less populated towns and areas?

The streets of the smaller downtowns I like and want to return to have a charm and slower pace of activity than the large downtowns I enjoy. Visiting them I do not see the high volumes of pedestrian traffic or feel the frenetic pace and electric energy that I often get on streets of Manhattan, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, London or Paris.

Instead –leaving festivals and special events aside– the setting is more languid, devoid of passing platoons of pedestrians, while filled with charmingly attractive buildings, shops, landscapes and public spaces. It is easy to walk on uncrowded sidewalks and safe to cross the streets/roads. There is always at least one good and popular place to eat and drink. Finally, the people we encounter in the shops, restaurants and public spaces are friendly – and often interesting characters. In these likeable small downtowns we feel comfortable and relaxed, yet entertained and/or amused.

Moreover, my experience suggests I am far from alone in having this viewpoint. Most of the reasons I’ve heard people give for visiting a small town or a rural area are on the order of “getting away from it all,” or enjoying a slower and more relaxed pace in a scenic setting. I do not think many people go to a small downtown in search of a lot of “action!”

Furthermore, my numerous, if admittedly non-systematic conversations over the years with residents in the small towns I have either visited or lived in, suggests that they highly value the low energy and slow pace of the communities in which they reside.

Energy and pace can be thought of as continuums with strong and weak manifestations that are displayed in inverse patterns in large and small downtowns.  Though larger downtowns are better known for their fast pace and the sense of excitement that their users enjoy, they also often have charming public retreats where people can go to engage in a more comfortable, languid and relaxed pace. For example, in New York City are the famous and adored Central Park and 250 much smaller “pocket parks,” among which Paley Park is perhaps the best known. Conversely, we sometimes find an air of excitement and a faster pace in these small downtowns, not on the sidewalks, but in a public space and/or inside a bar or restaurant that functions as the community’s “village well,” its gathering spot.

Walkability

My field visits across the country, conducted over many years, suggest that:

  • In many small and medium-sized downtowns, pedestrian counts may be just a few hundred, or even far less, per day. Without doubt, even if these downtowns are completely revitalized, they can never potentially reach the pedestrian counts or waves of walking platoons that can be attained in denser urban downtowns. (Tourist downtowns might be exceptions.) Density provides an upper bound on a district’s potential pedestrian traffic, but does not in and of itself guarantee the achievement of those levels. This was amply demonstrated by the barren sidewalks of too many downtowns in the 1980s and 1990s that used office development as their engine of economic revitalization
  • In many small and medium -sized communities, even if all the shops were attractive and interesting, there still would not be enough of them to generate lengthy pedestrian trips or a lot of strolling and window-shopping. As Bill Ryan, a well-know downtown analyst at UWEX’s Center for Community and Economic Development, has noted:  ”Most rural small downtowns are anchored by a c-store, a couple of bars and a couple of restaurants, beauty salon, accounting/tax/insurance, and other services.  Not much to stroll through” (3)
  • Many of the successful stores I have observed in these small downtowns, even though they may be relatively small, function as retail destinations – they are not “found” by shoppers strolling through town. Instead, shoppers know them and go directly to them, usually with a specific type of purchase in mind. The pedestrian parts of their shopping trips are often largely confined to walks from and back to their automobiles. This importance of the automobile should not be surprising in rural environments where 50-minute auto trips to jobs and regional shopping centers are normal and where getting to local schools, churches, friends and neighbors usually require the use of a car.

Kaid Benfield’s makes an important distinction between walkability and density. (4) Following that line of thought, it seems to me that density can facilitate and stimulate pedestrian traffic, but walkability plainly entails other people friendly dimensions such as the ease, pleasantness and safety of walking. Walkability is required by downtowns large and small, dense or less dense, whether the pedestrian flow is large or small.

Economic Viability: The Need for a “Right Fit” Strategy and Its Challenges

Any successful downtown will need to be economically healthy. Economic strength generally does correlate with variables connected to size. Consequently, small downtowns are caught in a conundrum: they need enough economic strength to be attractive, viable and successful, but not so much that it threatens the small town and small downtown characteristics that attract its user population. This requires a kind of careful calibration that meshes easily into a “right fit” type of growth strategy.

This means that there is probably some opportunity for growth, but it will be limited in terms of the new buildings and their associated roads, employees and residents.

Of probable greater importance is the improvement of the attractiveness and functionality of existing downtown spaces, making current merchants better business operators and recruiting new capable business operators. This will probably entail:

  • Stronger brick and mortar convenience operations
  • Local merchants learning to be more e-commerce capable
  • Looking for and realizing opportunities to recruit or grow local e-merchants who can sell in a national or international e-marketplace. 

Here are two firms that sell to historical reenactors, movie companies, etc., that are good examples of firms located in small towns that have Internet and catalog sales that are far above what their trade areas could support:

  • Jas. Townsend and Son is located in Pierceton, Indiana, a town with a population in 2010 of 1,095.  They help “historical reenactors, movie makers, theatrical companies, pirates, and regular people find items including clothing, tents, books, knives, tomahawks, oak barrels and lots of other goods appropriate for 1750 to 1840 – especially the American Revolutionary War and War of 1812.”
  • Schipperfabrik is located in Columbus, WI, population 4,991. It “is the world’s largest and most diverse manufacturer and supplier of WW1 Uniforms, equipment and insignia. We pride ourselves on our world class, museum grade reproductions, all made based on original specifications and original pieces.”

Of note is the fact that both firms manufacture much of the merchandise they sell online. While retail and restaurants often take center stage in small downtown revitalization efforts, firms providing blue collar jobs have usually been the economic cogs of small towns. It’s time for more attention to be paid to them.

Creating and implementing an effective right fit economic development strategy will probably be very challenging tasks for small downtowns. These tasks will require an array of sophisticated skills in both planning and execution as well as a level of financial resources that are well beyond what most small towns can afford. This is further evidence that, as Andrew Dane and I argued in a previous article, revitalizing small town downtowns can be very difficult because the challenges they face are often surprisingly complex, while they have meager financial and personnel resources to spend on their resolution or amelioration. (5)

My Take Aways

Based on the above analysis, I’ve come to the following take aways from my reflections about successful small downtowns:

  • There are no linear relationships between greater density, more multi-functionality and higher pedestrian counts and having a successful downtown. Small downtowns succeed not by getting a lot bigger, but by becoming a lot better 
  • Critical to the success of a small downtown is its ability to comply with its user population’s preferences for attractive places with relatively few people, lower energy levels and a relaxed activity pace 
  • Successful revitalizations of small downtowns may strengthen and increase the densities of various economic functions and its consequent foot traffic, but not to anywhere near dense urban levels and, most importantly, not to where the downtown’s relaxed and languid pace of activity is significantly altered or endangered 
  • This is the nub of the challenge in small downtown revitalization efforts: how to right fit increased economic activities and development so that they meaningfully strengthen the downtown, while not violating all the things that its user population values about it, e.g., its charming appearance, slower pace, lower energy, and uncrowded ways of doing things
  • In small communities, strong pedestrian activity is neither to be found nor valued in the local culture, nor easy to generate. A walker friendly downtown is still needed, not  to stimulate highly increased pedestrian flows, but to maintain the downtown’s easy and relaxed pace of activities 
  • Of course, a small downtown might indeed become much stronger economically through a lot of growth, but then the question of whether it is still small is likely to emerge… and generate political conflicts
I do not think I have provided here the full answer to the question of how, besides the dimensions associated with size, successful small downtowns differ from successful large downtowns, but I feel confident that I am on the right road.
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Mark Waterhouse, Bill Ryan, Andrew Dane  and Laura Krakoff for their helpful comments and edits on an earlier draft of this article.

Endnotes

  1. N. David Milder, “Crime and Downtown Revitalization,” Urban Land, Sept. 1987, pp. 16-19 DT Crime Article
  2. Belden Russonello & Stewart LLC, “The 2011 Community Preference Survey: What Americans are looking for when deciding where to live”, Analysis of a survey of 2,071 American adults nationally conducted for the National Association of Realtors. March 2011, p. 17
  3. In a telephone conversation and comments on an earlier draft of this article. See also: Bill Ryan, Beverly Stencel, and Jangik Jin, “Retail and Service Business Mix Analysis of Wisconsin’s Downtowns,” Center for Community & Economic Development, University of Wisconsin – Extension Staff Paper, Sept. 1, 2010
  4. Kaid Benfield’s Blog, “For walkable cities, it’s not about the density – it’s about finding the right kind of density,” Posted March 4, 2013 on Green Enterprise, Living Sustainably
  5. N. David Milder and Andrew Dane, “Some Thoughts on the Economic Revitalization of Small Town Downtowns,” The Downtown Curmudgeon Blog,   Blog article link

Crime Downtown: Does Anything Work?

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Editors’s note: The Downtown Curmudgeon is very happy to welcome Lawrence Houstoun as a guest columnist. Larry is well known for his two books on downtown BIDs as well as for his many articles on a wide variety of downtown subjects ranging from housing and office workers to public spaces and bicycle ridership. I think you will find his column on downtown crime — as is usual with his writings — thoughtful,  provocative, well written and worth reading. Without further ado, here’s Larry:

Crime Downtown

In the 1970’s, many of the  business centers of America’s older cities had reputations for widespread crime. The media–news as well as fiction– contributed greatly to the scary reputations. One evening TV news director was said to set priorities with this slogan—“If it bleeds, it leads”. As customers and businesses abandoned the traditional places to shop and run their businesses a great deal of commercial real estate was marked down and / or abandoned. Few believed that central business districts would ever recover. Long neglected buildings, dimly lighted blocks, empty stores—all contributed to the negative images of America’s downtowns.  Various remedies were suggested.

In reviewing the types of measures tried, this article focuses on business improvement districts (BIDs) which are functioning in 1500 downtowns in North America. Their mission is simply to strengthen economically the business prospects of private enterprises  operating in a shared environment. Business led boards of directors share the costs and set the priorities. At that time, no priority ranked higher than reduction of crime and fear of crime.

The numbered sections below are approximately in order of the period in which each remedy was popular.

  1.  More Cops

Often, the first attempt at economic  recovery was  an appeal to the affected municipalities to increase police presence downtown. The common response to these requests was that there was not enough money in the local budgets for even a token police expansion. Police departments added that business districts had less crime than many residential neighborhoods and did not warrant priority.

  1. More People

Writing in 1961 (“ Death and Life of Great American Cities,” Vintage) , urbanist Jane Jacobs noted the frequently expressed desire to increase the number of police  in order to reassure pedestrians. Jacobs wrote that there would never be enough police  for this purpose. She argued instead that the most successful technique to reassure pedestrians in cities is the presence of more pedestrians. She   observed that empty sidewalks, not ones packed with people ,are the most frightening.

In the 1970’s, crime and fear of  crime had induced many businesses to move to what appeared to be locations  less frightening. Downtowns lost businesses and their former convenience as places to work and shop. The media were full of reports of “urban crime”, widely believed to be concentrated in the downtowns, places which were familiar to shoppers and office employees. Fewer shoppers induced more people to avoid traditional commercial centers.

  1. More Patrols: Business Improvement Districts (BIDs)

Wearing distinctive uniforms, these radio equipped men and women were invented by the early BIDs to reassure pedestrians that the  downtown is safe because official-looking  “Ambassadors” were watching. Although they lack police powers, they were sold as being the “eyes and ears” of police departments. If something is wrong, the uniformed “Ambassadors” have cell phones and can reach the police through the BID central office.

A lot of BID assessment dollars have been directed toward this crime “remedy”. The University City BID in Philadelphia, for example, has “42 Safety Ambassadors patrolling neighborhood streets on bikes and on foot seven days a week from 10am to 3am.” BIDs typically believe that these staff members provide a measure of protection to persons on sidewalks. In addition to the safety benefits, these men and women may also provide walking escorts, vehicular services and homeless outreach. In 2012, this totaled 120,571 patrol hours in University City.

In practice, these  BID patrollers probably do reassure some uneasy pedestrians simply by their visible presence. Visibility comes with  a price, however. To be effective, there must be enough of them throughout the business districts to be readily seen by pedestrians, including during evenings  when pedestrians are  going home  from entertainment and  dinner after dark. To meet this challenge requires  more than two shifts to maintain coverage ,  accounting for holidays, vacations, sick leave, etc. This implies a substantial personnel payroll, including the costs of management and staff training, and often  amount to a third of BID total budgets. ( While BIDs emphasize their security role, these men and women may also be assigned to count homeless and code violations or assist drivers in emergencies.

Unfortunately, there is no reliable research revealing the extent to which  the uniformed personnel succeed in their primary mission—lessening fear on the sidewalks. For example, do otherwise fearful pedestrians actually shop or dine more often because uniformed BID employees patrol the district? No one knows.

Unhelpful Research

Much that appears to be research, however, provides little or no useful information to guide subsequent downtown leaders.  With a quarter century of experience, there is surprisingly little qualified examinations of any aspect of BID functions. Some research studies lump all  BID services together, in which case groups planning such organizations cannot profit from this experience; eg  what BID services actually make a significant difference? Some observers believe that simply keeping sidewalks  clean is a sign to criminals that the district is a bad place for them, who then may avoid it. Some researchers see the existence of a BID itself as sufficient to reduce crime. The announced completion  of a study in Los Angeles, for example, suggested that any shape or content of BIDs cuts crime in the study  areas, regardless of the nature of its services. Apparently, if a BID existed in or near an area where the study team worked and crime was lessened it seemed that the existence of any form of BID contributed to that improved condition. Did strolling “safety” Ambassadors or substantially enhanced lighting ,for example, make a difference? What about keeping shop windows lighted after normal hours? These and comparable alternatives are not reported.

Unanswered Questions

Another university based  study team, also working in Los  Angeles, studied the effect of zoning in eight  relatively  high crime areas with different forms of zoned land uses. The team found that “mixed commercial and residential zoned areas are associated with lower crime rates than are commercial-only zoned areas. “ This report reads in part: “Our results suggest that mixing ‘residential only’ zoning into commercial blocks may be a promising means of reducing crime”. Readers can come to their own conclusions regarding the utility of this advice as a tool for minimizing crime– zone it away? Move the commercial district?

Do walking patrols during daylight hours make pedestrians feel safer or reduce crime as many BIDs claim? Does maintaining walking patrols all night warrant the substantial added cost?  If the BID can generate sufficient pedestrian traffic, does this make a difference in fear or crime levels?  There is no reliable evidence to justify any of these substantial BID expenses. If police could lessen crime or fear at something like half the unit cost of armed officers, would this not be a popular police option in commercial areas?

For a brief while a Rutgers University based social scientist, George Kelling, put forward an attractive theory, suggesting that poorly maintained urban properties sent a signal to criminals that such an area of social disorder was a good place to operate—that is, the existence of “broken windows” and poor  maintenance, encourages more misbehavior. BID expert David Milder, countered that an excessive amount of attention to sidewalk sanitation often distracted BIDs from fundamental requirements such as redeveloping  commercial centers, business recruitment, facade improvements, etc.

Positive Results

If social science research provides little guidance in designing programs to overcome  crime and fear of crime , there are scattered examples of successful working programs that warrant examining. One or two bars in the East Falls, Philadelphia neighborhood were generating a rash of hold ups. The BID purchased and installed a half dozen motion detecting cameras.  Periodically or when a problem was reported, the local police checked the cameras for evidence. It turned out that the responsible people lived in the neighborhood. The sight of the camera installation scared off the bad guys and the crime wave ended. On the assumption that it might come back, several merchants volunteered to monitored the cameras. Among the selling points, the BID leadership stressed that the cameras were “on duty” 24 hours a day .

Downtown Washington DC BID was among the earliest districts to offer closed circuit tv  as well as uniformed patrols as part of  their public safety services. Noting the effect of the Boston Marathon terrorist attack, the BID has issued a “leadership paper” designed to enhance property owners, managers and businesses ability to respond to “natural and man made disasters.”

An area on the Brooklyn,  NY  waterfront long known for its crime, organized walking patrols in the early days of the BID (Brooklyn Navy Yard.) The board felt that reducing crime was its sole need and proceeded on that basis. Some years later, it was agreed that the patrols were no long heeded and the program was ended or “mothballed”.

The Circumstances Have Changed; Have the BIDs?

Crime is not what it used to be in America’s cities. Far from the days when  fear was widely seen as the ultimate obstacle to urban recovery, most Downtowns are now filled with stores and places to eat and they have managed that transformation without traditional department store anchors. Old office buildings, converted to attractive, middle income places  to live , brought customers closer to stores and restaurants for their mutual benefit. People are enjoying places that were written off not long ago . BIDs are formed  and properties are attracting investments in commercial centers without worries about fear of crime. A new optimism has replaced the old pessimism. The reduction of fear in shopping districts as implied by the growth of residents in central cities has been part of a broader change in public attitudes about cities.

In a paper published in 2000 (http//www.RickNevin.com/uploads/Nevin 2000Env Res author Manuscript.pdf)(PDF),  Rick Nevin found that America’s crime rates correlate closely  with the use of lead in gasoline. As  lead emissions increased, crime increased. As the use of lead declined, crime rates declined. Nevins wrote that use of Tetraethyl lead in gasoline explained 90% of the variations of violent crime in America and explained comparable results in a half dozen  other countries.  America has been looking in the wrong places and at the wrong manifestations of urban crime and therefore  solutions  to this important problem remain beyond our grasp. Patrolling Ambassadors, more cops, rezoning, the mix of BID programs seem not to matter, nor does their location.  If Nevins’ research  continues to hold up, the success has been the direct result of Federal regulation

One sees fewer BID reports claiming that  Ambassadors or other BID programs were responsible for a decline in crime or fear during the period when urban crime had improved nationally. These claims of success included a great many downtowns without BIDs. Indeed, the “urban crime” that was once seen as downtowns’ insoluble economic problem has attracted none of the merchant hysteria or the urban flight of earlier years. Did BIDs correct the problems of crime and fear? Certainly not.

Nevertheless, for the most part the walking patrols continue. What message are downtown leaders sending?

Lawrence Houstoun

So…Surprise! You have a lot of suburban creatives…

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Posted by N. David Milder

Introduction. Within the economic development community considerable attention has been focused on young, hip knowledge workers and artists. These young hipsters are part of what Richard Florida has termed the Creative Class. Nationally, they have been drawn in recent years to very dense urban areas that they have helped revitalize, from both residential and business perspectives. It is for these reasons that many economic development organization (EDO) leaders have based their revitalization strategies and business marketing programs on the attraction and growth of these “young creatives.”

However, Florida’s definition of the creative class is in terms of occupations, not age. The occupations Florida uses to define the creative class are from the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC):

  •  Super Creative Core: Computer & mathematical; life, physical & social science; architecture and engineering; education, training and library; arts, design, entertainment, sports, media
  •  Creative Professionals: Management occupations; business & financial operations; legal; healthcare practitioners & techs; high-end sales & sales management

chart

Going unnoticed –as is probably the case in many of our nation’s large metro areas – is the fact that the heavily suburban counties in Northern NJ also have a lot of workers in these creative class occupations. For example, in 2010, Bergen County had 148,150; Middlesex 141,550; Mercer 112,050; Monmouth 86,350; Somerset 74,600 and Morris 103,500 (see table above). Importantly, many creatives also live in these counties: e.g., in 20011 the numbers of resident creatives were: Bergen 196,892, Middlesex 163,910, Mercer 74,541, Monmouth 125,545, Somerset 80,624 and Morris 120,035. As a result of career stages and geographic location, these “suburban creatives” are older, more likely to have families, have higher earnings and higher net worths, and live in single-family homes than the urban hipsters. Moreover, the suburban creatives are equally, if not more, creative and entrepreneurial. Significantly, they do not have to be attracted to these counties — they are already there. They account for a significant part of the healthy and very desirable residential areas in these counties. Also, the downtowns in these counties that have been able to respond to the suburban creatives’ lifestyles and spending patterns have had successful revitalizations: e.g., Englewood, Red Bank, Ridgewood, Westfield, Morristown, etc.

The presence of the creatives means greater job growth. DANTH’s analysis shows that in the 14 Northern NJ counties that Regional Plan Association includes in the NJ-NY-CT Metropolitan Region, there is a correlation of .81 between the number of creatives in a county’s workforce and the number of new jobs projected between 2010 to 2020 by the state’s Dept. of Labor; the correlation between creatives who live in the counties and their job growth was .92. Looking just at the eight heavily suburban counties of Bergen, Passaic, Middlesex, Mercer, Monmouth, Somerset, Morris and Ocean the respective correlations are .84 and .93. In the 14 counties, there is a strong association, .91,  between the number of creatives who live in a county and the number of creatives who are in a county’s workforce.

Economic Strategy and Program Implications. Many EDOs in Northern NJ, be they EDCs, SIDs or municipal or county departments, may want to alter their strategic thinking, marketing and recruitment programs to better leverage their considerable creative manpower assets.

Because economic development in these counties is heavily viewed through retail and office development lenses, one area in which these assets have been minimally leveraged by EDOs is the creation and growth of small businesses operated by creatives. DANTH’s trends analysis suggests that the creatives can be expected to be increasingly entrepreneurial in coming years:

  • Nationally, the workforce is becoming increasingly composed of “contingent” workers, often creative freelancers. One estimate, by Intuit, sees as much as 40% of 2020’s workforce being contingent. Many young creatives have long followed the freelancer path at the beginning of their careers. Older creatives, who are either laid off or seeking career changes, have also followed this path later in their careers. We can expect more of them to do so in the future.
  • Many boomers are changing their careers as they enter the pre-retirement 55-64 age group, which has a high rate of entrepreneurialism compared to other age groups
  • Retired boomers are increasingly starting new careers because they still want to be active and/or they need the income.

The young creatives and their more mature colleagues bring different asset and need sets to starting a business in terms of training, experience, the size and reach of their professional social networks, and their financial resources. Nevertheless, both groups will:

  • Most probably be inexperienced as entrepreneurs and may need to acquire skills in marketing, bookkeeping, business planning, etc.
  • Need to raise capital (mostly new firms with employees)
  • Possibly need to hire employees (the non-freelancers)
  • Need attractive and convenient places to meet and exchange ideas with other new entrepreneurs and potential clients/customers
  • Need commercial spaces for their new businesses (the non-home office operations)
  • Prefer business locations where these needs can be maximized, especially those that are really easy to get to on foot or by car, bus or rail.

The range and depth of these needs will differ mostly not by age, but, as indicated above, between those who are freelancers with no employees and those who are creating firms, usually incorporated, with employees.

Given the relative dispersion in the suburban counties, their stronger downtowns, often their county seats, (e.g., Freehold, Morristown, Somerville, New Brunswick) may be the best geographic locations for meeting these needs. Their existing economic agglomeration offers a density of businesses, government offices, commercial spaces, professional and financial services, restaurants, coffee houses and watering holes in a reasonably walkable area. But, to meet the most pressing needs of the new and budding entrepreneurs, these downtowns may have to develop a more specialized “entrepreneurial infrastructure.” By doing so, the downtown itself becomes a kind of informal incubator/accelerator. Some possible components of such an infrastructure are:

  • A cadre of technical assistance/entrepreneurship advisors available at nearby colleges and universities or at a SBA Small Business Development Center or at local business consulting firms or through organizations such as SCORE. Helpful would be a mechanism to easily link the entrepreneurs to the types of advisors they need
  • Besides commercial banks, SBA, and personal investors, these new and developing companies would benefit from having access to other sources of capital such as angel investors, venture capitalists and crowdfunding. Here again, a mechanism to help link the entrepreneurs to these various types of investors would be helpful
  • Coworker spaces are finding increasing acceptance across the nation. They can be used by freelancers, new companies or small existing companies. They can function as a kind of “business incubator lite” or provide some business acceleration functions for older firms
  • A full blown business incubator and/or a business accelerator
  • A variety of relatively small and affordable spaces for a) freelancers who do not want to work at home or in a coworker space and b) firms that either are too large for or also do not want to be in a coworker space. These spaces can be in the downtown or elsewhere within a reasonable drive of the downtown
  • A mechanism to help link freelancers to project opportunities and where they can get things like health insurance
  • A permissions and approvals process that is truly timely and affordable for new firms be they startups or new move-ins. Most jurisdictions that think they have a good process upon close inspection are shown to need significant improvements.

(Note: this list is not meant to be exhaustive, but suggestive.)

Some of these components or parts of them may already exist in and near the downtown. Others will have to be created whole or in part.

Some pilot organization is needed to:

  • Design the downtown’s entrepreneurial infrastructure in terms of its components. This effort should bring into play the major local government agencies having economic development responsibilities, relevant EDCs and any downtown SIDS/BIDs. Most importantly it also should bring to the table major landlords and experienced businesspeople who live and/or work in the county, especially those who are experienced business investors or well networked with those who are
  • Create an implementation plan that would cover how it would be financed and who would do what
  • Create an organization to manage this infrastructure or designate an existing organization to do so.

Downtown and County Benefits. Some potential benefits of such a program are:
For a downtown:

  • Better business retention through the strengthening of some of its small businesses: helping some survive and others to grow in the downtown.
  • A stronger cadre of freelancers with an increased ability to afford needed downtown goods, services and amenities
  • Significantly more small businesses wanting to locate in the downtown
  • Significantly more small businesses wanting to use the downtown’s goods, services and amenities
  • The development of an image of the downtown as a very business friendly place that is exciting because it is savvy about what small firms need to grow and succeed — and it provides those things
  • The consequent greater attractiveness of the downtown as a business location to other and even larger firms, with associated impacts on commercial rents, the assessed values of commercial buildings, property taxes, jobs, etc.

For its county:

  • A program to help increase the success rate of the county’s growing number of county residents who become new entrepreneurs, be they freelancers or incorporated
  • A program to help more of the county’s existing small businesses to grow, with commensurate job growth and need for additional commercial spaces
  • A program that will spawn new firms with new jobs and a need for additional spaces
  • The ability to develop a business marketing program that puts the “creatives” spin on the county’s skilled workforce and leverages its small business development advantages to attract older and more substantial firms.

So You Don’t Have a Lot of Hip Young Professionals…

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Posted by N. David Milder

Introduction

For over a decade Richard Florida and Joel Kotkin have dueled over the proper way to analyze regional economic growth and their conflicting political and urban/ suburban preferences. They do agree, however, on one very basic and critical point: in today’s world, economic growth is very dependent on knowledge and geographically will tend to flow to areas where the knowledge workers cluster. (1)

Unfortunately, many within the economic development community have come to have a disproportionate amount of focus on and regard for one type of knowledge worker, the young hip urban professional. Too often communities feel unable to secure their economic futures because they have few young hip professionals or are led into futile attempts to attract them. Frequently overlooked are other assets that these young hipster deficient communities do have and that could be leveraged into economic growth.

Attention to young urban professionals within the economic development community predates the Florida-Kotkin “debates,” emerging in the 1980s. Once called “yuppies,” by the 1990s that term had became pejorative and worn out because of the segment’s behaviors and luxurious lifestyle. Later, around 2000, Richard Florida came along with his creative class theory that helped refocus attention on young knowledge workers and artists whose presence and behaviors shaped the hip, open-minded and welcoming urban communities that are conducive to growing creative class clusters. (2) About the same time downtown real estate developers and retailers had discovered the economic clout of these young well-educated urbanites, whom some referred to revealingly as “walking wallets.” Some developers of downtown residential buildings even had them specifically designed to suit this market segment in terms of apartment layouts, amenities and leasing policies. (3)

Googling “the importance of hip young professionals in economic development” brings up a host of articles that proclaim the economic significance of having a throng of young professionals in your community. For example, an article in the Richmond Times Dispatch stated:

“Based on lessons learned from “urban hub dynamics,” the long-term economic prosperity of metropolitan areas will be based, in part, on how quickly a region can become recognized as one of these preferred places for young professionals to live and work today.” (4)

However, there has been a well-known unevenness in the ability of metro areas to grow and/or attract young, hip knowledge workers. Consequently, many cities that did not have a lot of young professionals or that were losing them to hipper cities, have taken on action programs specifically aimed at wooing them, e.g., Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Richmond, Memphis, Tampa, Indianapolis, Baton Rouge, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Tallahassee, and Fresno. (5).

Even within young professional rich metro areas, the geographic distribution of the young professionals usually is lopsided, taking on a split that leaves the suburbs well behind the urban cores. Does that mean that these suburban communities and their downtowns are doomed economically because of their young professionals deficits?  For them to try to replicate big city hip neighborhoods on a much smaller scale in and around their downtown areas may be an appealing strategy, though one of often questionable viability. Consider Richard Florida’s explanation of why young professionals are drawn to urban locations:

“Urban living provides them with thicker job and dating markets, opportunities to share rent with roommates, and plenty of things to do in their off hours, from bar-hopping to attending graduate school.” (6)

Suburban communities that want to erase a young professionals deficit need to have sufficient and appropriate “thicknesses” and should ask:

  • Are they basically bedroom communities with a supportive downtown or are their downtowns regional commercial centers?
  • Can they generate enough knowledge worker employment opportunities nearby?
  • Can they provide a density of entertainment/leisure activity options that approaches those of large urban neighborhoods?
  • Can they reach a young professional critical population mass that can attract other young professionals?
  • Can they provide affordable and attractive downtown rental housing and will the landlords do leases when roommates are involved?

Perhaps suburban communities and metro areas with young professional deficits should have a more realistic perspective on the economic advantages of young professional populations and then take an in-depth look at other assets that they do have for leveraging economic growth.

Putting Young Professionals in Perspective as Economic Growth Assets  

Discussions of young professionals often conjure up images of brilliant young entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg, who in their 20s founded huge high technology companies in a garage, a dorm room or a makeshift office. (7) These young business titans seem to demonstrate the superior entrepreneurship, high tech know-how and inventiveness of young professionals, an image that is also reinforced by reports of slower adoption of digital technologies by older age cohorts. (8)

Entrepreneurship. Some very credible research done for the Kauffman Foundation clearly shows that people in the 20-34 age group are not the most entrepreneurial, but the least. For example, a 2009 report by Dane Stangler found that:

 “Contrary to popularly held assumptions, it turns out that over the past decade or so, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity belongs to the 55-64 age group. The 20-34 age bracket, meanwhile, which we usually identify with swashbuckling and risk-taking youth (think Facebook and Google), has the lowest rate. Perhaps most surprising, this disparity occurred during the eleven years surrounding the dot-com boom—when the young entrepreneurial upstart became a cultural icon.” (9)

 Furthermore, another Kauffman study by Robert Fairlee published in 2011 found that between1996 and 2010 the 20-34 age group’s proportion of new entrepreneurs dropped from 35% to 26%, while the 55-64 age group’s proportion rose from 14% to 23% (10)
Freelancers are self-employed, not committed long-term to a client or employer and usually not incorporated. They can be in a wide range of industries and occupations. In many of our urban creative clusters, “creative freelancing” also is a growing trend. For example:

“In a 2005 report, the Center for an Urban Future estimated that 22,000 “creative freelancers”—writers, artists, architects, producers, and interior, industrial, and graphic designers—lived in Brooklyn, an increase of more than 33 percent since 2000. The Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation has dubbed the area from Red Hook to Greenpoint the “Creative Crescent.” (11)

Many of these freelancers are Millennials, i.e., people born between 1977 and 1993. The online freelancer job mart oDesk (sic) had a survey done of “independent workers (freelancers) worldwide who had been active on odesk within 180days.” Unfortunately, no data was provided on how many respondents were from the USA, but, given that oDesk is based in CA and the website operates in English, one might reasonably presume that most respondents were American. Almost 2,000 of the freelancer respondents were Millennials and their views about entrepreneurship are revealing. They are certainly enthused by entrepreneurship though their understanding of the concept is rather untraditional: it is divorced from the notion of starting a business. As Rieva Lesonsky summarized their views:

  • For 90 percent of Millennials surveyed, being an entrepreneur means having a certain mindset, rather than starting a company.”
  • “Aspects of this mindset mentioned included being a self-starter, risk-taker, visionary and someone who ‘spots opportunity.’ ”
  • “Millennials see themselves as building entrepreneurial careers whether they work for someone else or freelance – they don’t necessarily have to start their own businesses.” (12)

In this respect, the Millennials’ “new entrepreneurship,” in both attitude and deed, may help channel them to corporate careers since it is exactly what corporations now are looking for in new hires. According to Eleonora Sharef of Hireart.com:

 “The most successful job candidates… are ‘inventors and solution-finders,’ who are relentlessly ‘entrepreneurial’ because they understand that many employers today don’t care about your résumé, degree or how you got your knowledge, but only what you can do and what you can continuously reinvent yourself to do.” (13)

 Creativeness/Inventiveness. Prima facie, it seems absurd to think that creativity and inventiveness halt completely or significantly after people reach 30 or 35. While there appears to be a lot of conventional wisdom on this subject and a number of opinion-based articles, there are surprisingly few rigorous studies. Also, the linguistic boundaries between being creative and being inventive or innovative are unclear, which makes analysis difficult. That said, if we take even a quick look at artists, be they in the visual or performing arts, they certainly appear to be creative well past their 30s, as the careers of people as diverse as da Vinci, Monet, Degas, Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse, Pollack, Grant, Olivier, Brando, Hepburn, Wilder, Lean, Ford, Allen, Kazan, Spielberg, Bach, Casals, Horowitz, Rachmaninoff and Perlman demonstrate. However, within those careers, many of the artists achieved one or more new styles or techniques that others saw as innovative and inventive. Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso, for example, were well known for their innovations, which continued on through the length of their careers. Among writers, many continued to produce works late in their lives, a small sample of whom might include Charles Dickens, Henry James, Mark Twain, Herman Wouk, Philip Roth, Agatha Christie, George Simenon and John Le Carré.

If we look at the worlds of science and technology a similar pattern emerges, with the exception of mathematics. Within academia it is commonly held that great mathematical achievements are overwhelmingly done by those under 30. Yet, Isaac Newton, who did indeed invent calculus when he was 24, then went on to invent modern physics when he was in his 40s. While Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr and James Watson did their best work in their 20s, Michael Faraday, Max Planck, Ernest Rutherford, Fritz Haber and Louis Pasteur did theirs in their 40s. (14)

Many of our digital wunderkinds have achieved or try to keep on making significant innovations later in their lives. Steve Jobs certainly made a splash in his 20s when he and Steve Wozniak invented the Apple computer, but he later founded Next and Pixar and many observers feel that his decades later contributions to the iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad were of equal or even far greater significance. Bill Gates also made major digital innovations while in his 20s and now is working on globally eradicating major diseases and improving education. Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded Google with their innovative search algorithm while in their 20s and now have their company working on such things as driverless cars and carbon free energy generation. Elon Musk helped found PayPal while in his 20s and now is involved in Tesla electric cars, SpaceX rocket launchers and SolarCity, a provider of solar energy systems. Furthermore, Silicon Valley is known for its many “serial entrepreneurs.”

One rigorous and interesting research project written in 2008 by Benjamin Jones at the Kellogg School of Management reported that the age of the innovators when they attain “great achievements in knowledge” is getting older and older: “The great achievements in knowledge of the 20th Century occurred at later and later ages. The mean age at great achievement for both Nobel Prize winners and great technological inventors rose by about 6 years over the course of the 20th Century. This aging phenomenon appears to be substantially driven by declining innovative output in the early life-cycle.” (15) Moreover, this research seems to show that “a 55-year-old and even a 65-year-old have significantly more innovation potential than a 25- year-old.” (16)

They Like Dense Urban Environments.  If young creatives are not more entrepreneurial or innovative than other age cohorts, then why have they captured the attention of so many within the economic development community? It is not because they play a critical role in Florida’s defining of the creative class, in which the pivotal, all important concept is that of the work people do, whatever their age or education. As Florida has explained, he developed his theory as an alternative to human capital theories of regional development:

 “Human capital theory uses educational attainment (typically the percentage of adults with a college degree), a very broad measure that excludes such successful entrepreneurs as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who didn’t graduate from college. My creative class measure is based on the work people actually do, as measured by detailed Bureau of Labor Statistics data. This allows researchers and economic developers to zero in on the actual occupational categories – science and engineering, arts and culture, business and management, meds and eds – that make up the creative class and other occupational classes….

 The creative class is not just a proxy measure for college graduates. Roughly three?quarters of college grads in America work in creative class jobs, but four in ten members of the creative class— 16.6 million workers—do not have college degrees.” (17)

 A more viable explanation of why the economic development community has focused so much of its attention on one subset of the creative class, the hip young creatives, is not the kind of work they do so much as where they like to live and their leisure time and entertainment activities. For decades, the economic development community was searching for a way to revitalize our nation’s urban areas. Numerous researchers, including Florida, Eugenie Birch and, even in some writings, Kotkin, have demonstrated that young professionals’ lifestyle preferences provide a potential solution path: they like living in dense urban environments and are flocking to them. (18)

Also interesting is that fact that this same research has shown that empty nesters, too, like dense urban living and are downsizing from their suburban single-family homes to urban apartments and townhouses. However, the economic development community has focused far less attention on the empty nesters than it has given the young hipsters.

While the hip young creatives may prefer living in dense urban areas, suburban areas can also attract large numbers of residents whose occupations fall within Florida’s definition of the Creative Class. (19) For example, in 2011, Morris County, NJ has 123,629 residents, 49% of the 269,714 in the labor force, who are in management, business, science, and arts occupations. (20) Many non-Millennial knowledge workers who have children prefer living in the suburbs. What proportion of them will move to urban core areas when their nests empty is unknown, but the odds are that significant numbers will stay in their suburban homes and/or communities, perhaps in their own downtowns in newly built or refurbished apartments. Other creatives/knowledge workers, the “lone eagles,” prefer to live and work in scenic rural “Valhallas.”(21)

Attraction for Employers. Many companies like to recruit the best and the brightest out of our nation’s top colleges and universities because they think they are accessing new ideas and techniques. Nonetheless, many firms also have a preference for hiring younger people that is based on bottom line reasoning. For example, it is not unusual to see a number of stories in the media about the age preferences in corporate hiring and the difficulties that people over 40 have in finding new jobs. Many firms prefer to hire younger people because they will work at lower salaries for longer hours, will probably be healthier and have more distant pension payouts than older and more experienced workers. One observer cited data showing that associates in one global law firm work an average of 2,462 billable and unbillable hours a year, 47 to 49 hour a week, though others in the industry claim the weekly total is probably closer to 60 hours. (22) It is not uncommon in New York City to hear claims that firms in the advertising, entertainment and legal industries “like to eat their young.”

Corporations also like to hire freelancers because of lower salary and benefit costs. As noted above, many firms may also like the millennial freelancers’ new  entrepreneurial mindsets.

How this will affect corporate office locational decisions remains to be seen. Certainly there is an interest in tapping this labor market segment in regions where they are present. Often, firms may not have to locate in downtowns to tap this labor market. When making locational decisions many firms will look at labor pools defined by 30 to 45 minute travel times, which means that many urban core young knowledge workers can be tapped from many suburban locations. Some firms may decide for suburban or urban locations depending upon the situation. Google, for instance, has not moved to San Francisco though it has hundreds of white buses transporting its employees everyday from the city to and from its headquarters Mountainview complex, an hour’s drive away. Yet, it also has a very large presence in Manhattan. Also, reverse commuting has been growing in many metro areas.

Population Size. The Millennials, of which the young urban hipsters are a subset, constitute the largest generation, about 23% of the US population, but they are outnumbered by the combined populations of the older and still largely active Gen X with16%, Younger Boomers 14%, and Older Boomers 10%. (23)

 Some Suggested Take Aways

  • There is little doubt that urban areas with a cluster of young hip creatives have a strong asset capable of driving a good part of their revitalization efforts
  • But, if you don’t have a heap of hip young creatives in or near your community, you may have lots of older creatives or some other assets, e.g., gas and petroleum trapped in shale rock, upon which your economic revitalization can be built
  • There probably are more knowledge workers and artistic people who are older than 35 years of age than younger
  • These “mature creatives” are more entrepreneurial and, at a minimum, just as innovative and creative as the younger group
  • In metro areas that are rich in knowledge workers, many of them probably live and/or work in suburban communities and these communities should have revitalization strategies that clearly recognize and leverage this asset
  • It should not be forgotten that many non-Millennial knowledge workers and artists also often live and/or work in dense urban areas, e.g., office workers, teachers and researchers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, architects, etc.

Disclosure

The author is not a Millennial, though he is quite fond of his friends and relatives who are.

ENDNOTES

1.  See for example: Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, Basic Books, 2002, pp. 402; Joel Kotkin, The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution Is Reshaping the American Landscape, Random House.(November 2000) pp. 256. The family of terms creatives, young professionals, young urban hipsters, knowledge workers, artists are used in this article as basically referring to very similar if not entirely completely congruent groups of people, some being subsets of others.

2. Richard Florida, “Competing in the Age of Talent: Quality of Place and the New Economy,” January 2000, pp. 55

3. Personal interviews with developers from 2003 through 2007

4. John W. Martin and Jack Berry, “Winning young professionals,” Richmond Times Dispatch,  May 20, 2013

5 Haya El Nasser,  “Mid-sized cities get hip to attract young professionals,” Yahoo! News, October 10, 2003

6. Richard Florida, “The Fading Differentiation between City and Suburb,” Urban Land, January 31, 2013, Article 

7. Tom Agan, “Why Innovators Get Better With Age,” New York Times, March 30, 2013

8. Maeve Duggan and Joanna Brenner, “The Demographics of Social Media Users — 2012,” PewResearchCenter, February 14, 2013. http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Social-media-users.aspx ; Kathryn Zickuhr, Generations and their gadgets, Pew Internet, Feb 3, 2011  http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Generations-and-gadgets/Report.aspx?view=all

9. Dane Stangler, “The Coming Entrepreneurship Boom,” Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, June 2009, pp. 6 p.4. Kauffman’s research looks at “all new business owners, including those who own incorporated or unincorporated businesses, and those who are employers or non-employers.”

10. Robert W. Fairlie, “Kauffman Index Of Entrepreneurial Activity 1996 – 2010,” Kauffman Foundation, March 2011, pp. 28, p.9.

11. Kay S. Hymowitz, “How Brooklyn Got Its Groove Back: New York’s biggest borough has reinvented itself as a postindustrial hot spot.” City Journal, Autumn 2011,  www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=7527

12. Rieva Lesonsky, “Millennials Are Rewriting the Rules of Work and Entrepreneurship” reports on a survey that had a full sample of 3,193, of which 1,958 were Millennials and was done by Millennial Branding for oDesk. For the oDesk slideshow on the report see: http://www.slideshare.net/oDesk/millennials-and-the-future-of-work-survey-results

13. As described in Thomas L. Friedman, “How to Get a Job,” New York Times, May 28, 2013, NYT Article here

14. See: http://www.scieditco.com/images/agescientists.html

15. Benjamin F. Jones , “Age and Great Invention,” Kellogg School of Management,  April 2008

16. See Tom Egan above

17. Richard Florida, theatlanticcities.com/jobs?and?economy/2012/07/what?critics?get?wrong?about?creative?class/2430/

18. Eugenie L. Birch, “Who Lives Downtown,” November 2005 • The Brookings Institution • Living Cities Census Series, pp. 20

19. Kris Hudson, Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2013,”Is Generation Y a ‘Game Changer’ for Housing?”

20. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007-2011 American Community Survey

21. See: Philip M. Burgess, “Lone Eagles Are a Varied Species,” The Rocky Mountain News, April 12, 1994 and Joel Kotkin, The New Geography cited above

22. Steven J. Harper, “The Tyranny of the Billable Hour,” New York Times , March 28, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/opinion/the-case-against-the-law-firm-billable-hour.html

23. Pew Research Center’s typology of generations was used with national census data for 2011 to compute these population estimates.