Talent key to city’s success

“Over time there will not be a successful region without a successful city…  we’re all in this together.”  Carol Coletta from CEOs for Cities kicked of her presentation at the ModelD Speaker Series with this statement.  While I’m all for a heartfelt call to action, what most impressed me by her presentation was the data-driven suggestions that would help propel Detroit to success.

According to Coletta, there are four dimensions on which cities must succeed: talent, connections, distinctiveness and innovation.  Each of these are driven by a “core vitality.”  So how do you get these?  While many community leaders are looking for best practices to implement, Coletta cautions that these occurred within a context.  That means that just because you copy what another city has done doesn’t mean that was successful.  So what can be done?

Having combed the data, Coletta pointed to three areas where a little change can result in major gains, which she called the talent dividend, the green dividend, and the opportunity dividend.

The talent dividend refers to the level of college attainment.  The pay-off of having this talent is pretty clear: better education means higher incomes, and a better-skilled workforce means great innovation and productivity, leading to a better city-living experience for all.  There are three ways to grow talent: educate your own, attract talent from elsewhere,  and retain the talent you already have.  Coletta pointed out that it is very hard to attract talent: of the 50 metro areas, only 16 have demonstrated gains, meaning the other 34 have lost talent.  We know how to educate, so how do you retain talent?  Data suggests this is directly tied to the quality of place and the quality of opportunities.

Now this is the exciting part: CEO for Cities has found that 58% of a city’s success can be explained by the percentage of college graduates in your population.  (Now that I’ve taken statistics and learned how to run a regression, I understand not only how they’ve gotten that number but what a big deal that is!)  So what does this mean?  As a city, college attainment should be your number one economic development goal.  For the city of Detroit, CEO for Cities has found that a 1% increase in college attainment would produce $3.4 billion annually – just in income.  That’s huge!

For the green dividend, they looked specifically at the number of miles traveled.  By reducing the average number of miles driven each day by just one mile, Detroit could see an addition $820 million dollars in its economy.  So how do we encourage denser development?  Good news: it looks as though the market demand is shifting in that direction.  CEOs for Cities has found that every one point of walk score is worth between $700 and $3000 in increased property value.  Go market forces, go!

The opportunity dividend was measured as the financial return on reducing poverty by just 1%.  In addition to be a noble thing to do, this will reduce the public service cost and return $396 million  to the economy.  Surprisingly, of the largest 50 metro areas, Detroit is not at the bottom in terms of its poverty rate; in fact, it’s not even in the bottom five.  Houston is right next to Detroit on the list, and how often do people associate Houston with poverty?

At any rate, if you add these dividends together, Detroit will see $4.6 billion annually – all for very small changes!   Of course, the bulk of this comes from talent.  So is there really hope for the city?  I think there is.

At Dave Egner’s prompting Coletta shared the story of students from Tulane flocking to New Orleans – not because of the tremendous job opportunities, but because they see tremendous opportunity for impact.  My friend and I were nodding vigorously to this story – that’s exactly why we feel drawn to Detroit, even though neither of us are Michiganders by birth.  Let’s make sure that this story is heard.  After all, even if we’re only able to move things by 1%, by moving the right things we can make tremendous impact!

Oh, and if you’re interested in learning more about these things, in addition to checking out the CEO for Cities website, be sure to check out the work being done by Lou Glazer at Michigan Future.  With him and the many other leaders pushing the conversation forward, Detroit will “rise from the ashes.”