Walkable neighborhoods in urban areas and plenty of neighborhood retail and dining options.
Those are the things that hip knowledge economy workers with money in their pockets are looking for in places to live.
Those findings come from a team of MBA students at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. The student team probed the attitudes of millennial workers, studied happenin’ neighborhoods in Chicago and considered Detroit’s opportunities for attacting such talent in the near future.
For Detroit, the biz school students said, talent attraction boils down to basics (like keeping the street lights on and delivering other basic public service) and more complex tasks like improving neighborhood retail outlets and better managing Motown’s media image.
“Detroit offers a unique opportunity which cities like Boston, New York and Chicago cannot match — the chance to be a person who has the power to make a difference right away,” the biz school students concluded. “To be on the ground floor of the turn around of a city, a city which was thought to be doomed to be a ghost city, is an opportunity which many young professionals will find appealing.”
