Ten years ago, the Metro Atlanta Chamber proudly bragged on Atlanta as "the hot place to be if you're young and restless," defined as someone 25-34 with a bachelor's degree or better. The metro region was attracting lots of well-educated young people -- " the most coveted demographic in the nation," according to the Chamber -- and doing so at a higher rate than almost any other area in the country.
That boded well for our future economic growth, because where young, well-educated people congregate, businesses follow to take advantage of their talent, education and energy. "A demographic wave is sweeping across our nation, and it will be a decisive force in shaping the economic destiny of Atlanta," economist Joe Cortright said at the time. "As cities move to a knowledge-based economy, the kind of talented people each area attracts will determine whether it wins or loses in the campaign for future prosperity."
But somewhere along the line, things went sideways for metro Atlanta. In the latest update in his work, Cortright notes that the national trends identified back in 2004 have only intensified. Younger, college-educated people continue to flock to close-in urban areas -- they are more drawn to cities than any previous generation -- and well-paying businesses are following them in even greater numbers. Study after study confirms the importance of cities in creating a critical mass of talent needed to drive innovation and entrepreneurship.
That change is transforming the face of metro regions across the country, and their economies as well. Houston saw a 50 percent increase in the number of well-educated young adults between 2000 and 2012. In Nashville, it's 48 percent; in Portland, it's 36 percent. But Atlanta?
While metro Atlanta's overall population grew by 30 percent between 2000 and 2012, the number of young, college-educated people in the region grew by just 2.8 percent. In fact, of the 51 metro areas with a population of a million or more, the only places that did worse than Atlanta in attracting young talent were Detroit, which lost 10 percent of its young college-educated population; and Cleveland, where that demographic grew by just 0.9 percent.
Those familiar with the housing growth and changing demographics of intown Atlanta -- an explosion of bars and apartments and restaurants and condos, with young professionals driving the change -- may find those Census-derived numbers hard to believe. But according to Cortright, almost all of metro Atlanta's increase in young, college-educated professionals has been concentrated within a three-mile radius of downtown. Outside of that inner core, there was no growth whatsoever in the number of college-educated young people, even as the overall population grew substantially. As Cortright notes, "This represents a remarkable reversal from the 1990s, when Atlanta recorded the fifth fastest rate of growth among large metropolitan areas."
So what happened? Why are we no longer attracting educated young people from outside the region, and why can't we keep those bright young people who are raised and educated here? A decade ago, the Metro Chamber commissioned Cortright to do a more in-depth study of Atlanta's appeal to the "young and restless," hoping no doubt to use his work as a marketing ploy. And it worked, with publications such as the New York Times running admiring analyses of Atlanta's youth appeal.
But even back then, there were problems. In focus groups conducted at the time, young, college-educated Atlantans complained of two major shortcomings: The lack of a vibrant, 24-hour downtown; and traffic and the lack of transit. "The traffic complaint was expected, but the complaint about transit in Atlanta was somewhat surprising," consultants reported. "Transit seems to be viewed by young adults as a basic building block of the kinds of communities they seek."
The fact that all of the metro region's growth among college-educated young people has occurred within a three-mile radius of downtown -- where those and other urban amenities are most readily available -- would seem to confirm that finding. Other data offer supporting evidence as well. In 1983, for example, 87.3 of all 19-year-olds had a drivers license, which was almost a requirement for mobility in suburban, sprawling communities. By 2008, it had fallen to 75.5 percent. By 2010, it had fallen to 69.5 percent, and signs are that it is continuing to drop quickly. The market is changing, the world is changing. We are not.
Admittedly, there's a certain chicken-or-egg quality to this debate. Did smart young people stop flocking to Atlanta because opportunity disappeared, or did opportunity disappear because smart young people stopped flocking here? I don't have a definitive answer, but I think it's telling that from 2000-2012, Buffalo saw an increase of 14,796 in the number of college-educated young people. That's almost twice the increase experienced by metro Atlanta (7,308), even though we're almost six times larger.
The same was true of Pittsburgh, which is less than half our size yet saw a jump of 28,083 college-educated young people, almost four times Atlanta's total. I don't think young people were drawn to those cities by opportunity; I think they were drawn there by other reasons, and then created opportunity.
In contrast, what Atlanta is seeing and experiencing seems to be the consequence of public disinvestment and disengagement. We have a state leadership that is more likely to treat concepts such as transit, density, and sidewalks as some UN-inspired Agenda 21 socialist conspiracy rather than as the new template for economic vitality. We have a balkanized system of local government that makes it impossible to take action on a regional basis, and on the whole we treat investments in our quality of life, transportation, health care and education -- the very core of life -- as nuisances to be minimized rather than opportunities to be seized.
So smart young people with a choice about where to make their lives are increasingly looking elsewhere. We are yesterday's news.
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