After reading Richard Florida’s book, Who’s Your City and thinking about what he says through his research findings and trying to implement in Roanoke, I would offer some initial responses.

1. It’s obvious Roanoke’s competitive advantage across the 5 life-stages is cost of living as evidenced by our better rankings in Appendix C.

2. The older you get, the better Roanoke is for people. Our lowest ranking was 143 out of 167 for singles ages 20-29, yet it is 50 out of 72 for metros whose population is between 250-500k. Professionals (ages 29-44) it’s 37 out of 72. Therefore, this data confirms our focus should be on attracting and retaining the YP population.

3. Some cities Roanoke aspires to become actually overall rank worse than Roanoke. When you do a head-to-head comparison of Appendix C to cities such as Asheville and Chattanooga (which were cities visited by local economic development officials) Roanoke has better marks 6-4 and 8-2, respectively. Therefore, I think the data shows Roanoke is better than many think when compared to its peers.

4. One Roanoke and New River Valley MSA. Using this same overall head-to-head comparison, Roanoke is 18 of 72 cities in the 250-500k population category. The 17 ahead of Roanoke many have 4-year institutions (Ann Arbor, Boulder, Durham, Fayetteville, Green Bay, Lexington, Lincoln, Provo, Etc.) . Therefore, this proves an old assertion. Roanoke is disadvantaged without a 4-year research entity and the importance of relationships with our local colleges  - supported by the new medical school. Further, the Blacksburg MSA was not in the list. There has been talk previously of working to combine the Roanoke-Blacksburg MSA into one MSA. Not sure what needs to be done to make it happen, but it is worth investigating. One combined MSA would not put the region into a higher population category, but instead would make it a total population of about 450,000 and perhaps in the top 5 of regions 250-500k. Doesn’t that sound a little better.

More to come in the future on Who’s Your City.   

We have blogged about FindYourSpot.com before and this blogger recently went through the process and Roanoke popped up as #6 in her Top 10. I wrote her a comment and welcomed her into the community. No response yet.

The process this blogger is going through is brought to life in Richard Florida’s new book Who’s Your City. It is Richard’s best book so far and really is packed with a ton of great insight and information. I plant to do a multi-part blog series on the book and how that effects our efforts in the RNR. Stay tuned…

I was asked recently by a civic group to give an update on Roanoke’s young adult movement. I came up with 7 examples of progress and I plan to address each over the next week. Here is the first.

Progress #1 - “The movement is bigger than Roanoke”

Across the nation, groups are forming at a rapid pace. I subscribe to a Google alert that shares all blog posts and traditional media stories showcasing all of the great work YPs are doing. It is refreshing to know so many young people are getting active and involved in the movement. Therfore, I believe we benefit from this shared synergy in other communities.

I also believe we have been able to communicate and partner with some of the national and international gurus on this topic. Richard Florida of the Creative Class and his staff has been very helpful on a number of fronts.  Jason Dorsey, the Gen Y guy, has also carried the torch for us on a number of fronts. Serial entrepreneur and 22-year-old Cameron Johnson has given a lot of his time to enhance entrepreneurship among young professionals and the business community as a whole. The list goes on and on. These advocates and champions have made our efforts more known and respected.

As a result, of this mass movement and partnerships, there have been a number of unique stories and that is where we will pick up with our next post tomorrow.