BusinessReport.com

For the better part of the past decade, Baton Rouge has been fretting over how to retain and attract young, educated 20- and 30-something professionals, especially those in the so-called Creative Class.

Mind you, we really haven’t done anything to actually retain or attract these young urban single professionals (or Yuspies), but jaws ache from Spanish Town to Southdowns from all the talking we’ve done about what needs to happen to turn Baton Rouge—and downtown especially—into a cool city.

Nothing epitomizes our singular vocal focus more than the 328 forums and committee meetings on the creation of a downtown entertainment district. How’s that working out?

While many, including yours truly, have lamented the fact this city finds embracing change and embracing males equally repulsive, there’s growing evidence that suggests places that have actually done something to lure this “dream demographic” have little to show for it. My hometown of Baltimore, for example, is one of roughly a dozen cities that have installed the offense of the hip and cool, yet each has struggled to find the end zones of economic and demographic growth.

So if baby boomers aren’t getting it done anymore, and upwardly mobile singles are o-ver-rated, then where does our city turn its lonely eyes?

Well, analysis by an outfit called the Praxis Strategy Group, according to an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, shows the cities that are blowing and going—such as the Raleigh-Durham of canvass trip fame—are teeming with young, educated families with parents who range from their mid-20s to mid-40s.

Don’t believe them? Then why does research show places like New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles—hot spots for the young and unconnected—have experienced below average job and population growth since 2000? Because middle-class families are fleeing those cities faster than players bolt from a John Brady-coached basketball team.

The wonks who study these things say couples with children are usually successful and motivated—and twice as likely to be in the top 20% of wage earners, according to the Census. Moreover, their incomes are rising faster than the national average. Hmmm … successful, motivated, well paid and hungry for more cash—sounds like the prerequisites for putting one’s children through private school.

Here’s another shocker: While vibrant downtowns remain important, the new and improved “dream demographic” prefer family-friendly suburbs with affordable housing, parks, trails and easy commutes. In other words, progressive thinking and quality of life demands can’t be the sole domain of the so-called downtown crowd.

Check out Portland, another canvass tour destination, which is loaded with both young singles and young families. Downtown remains a hot spot, but three-quarters of the area’s economic and residential growth is happening in the ‘burbs. Ask anyone who went on the trip and they’ll confirm it for you.

Young singles still flock to cities like Austin, Dallas and Atlanta. And young singles still flee from Baton Rouge. Yet many who leave do eventually return once a wedding band and a bambino join the family photo.

And getting more young families to settle in the Baton Rouge area is now the challenge for our future success.

The good news is Baton Rouge, like other cities along the 10/12 corridor, has a family-friendly reputation. The trick is to 1) get that word out to the rest of the nation while 2) addressing those things (public education, infrastructure and more varied quality of life options) that make “family-friendly” more fact than reputation.

So here’s the message to those in Forum 35 and other young professionals: If you want us to keep sucking up to you then get a master’s, get a job, get married and start having 2.5 children—and do it by the age of 42.