Diversity now a key tool in the fight for the creative class
Submitted by Steve on September 21, 2011
From Gail Johnson at The Globe and Mail:
Increasingly, demographic diversity—ethnic, gender, sexual, religious and so on—is proving crucial to the success of local economies. In other words, it’s no longer enough for cities to subscribe to the “if you build it, they will come” theory to attract top talent. Rather, they need to roll out the welcome mat to one and all.
“There’s no question about it any more; one of the greatest competitive advantages for any city is tolerance,” says Tom Jones, director of Smart City Consulting in Memphis, Tenn.
For proof, he points to results from a survey prepared for CEOs for Cities, a Chicago-based U.S. network of urban leaders. The survey involved 1,000 college-educated people aged 25 to 34, and it found that two-thirds of respondents decided where they wanted to live first, then went to that city and found a job afterward.