Diana R. Sieger is the president of the Grand Rapids Commmunity Foundation. For more information, visit Diana's President's pages or view her biography.

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President's Point of View: Vibrancy . . . once again!

November 20, 2009

I’ve certainly received quite a reaction from my Facebook and blog postings from earlier this week. I just thought I’d add a comment for clarification so everyone knows that I’m not locked in the 1960s though that was a pretty dynamic time of definite transformation of a different nature! While we need to attract and retain people under the age of 40, my question from my previous post was more in reference to the fact that it seems to be squeezing everyone else aside and that we need all age groups to make a great community. Here it is again: “Does a vibrant core city only include efforts/programs that focus on people under the age of 40? Seems as if so much is made of this and yet I know we need to attract younger people to West MI and help them stay! However, it feels like we may be alienating so many other people.”

The reality is we need young, college educated people in our communities and in particular our core cities if we want to build a strong future! Lou Glazer is the visionary who created and is president of Michigan Future, Inc based in Ann Arbor. He contends and I strongly concur that we need to increase the number of college educated adults. He writes: “Our best guess is that unless we substantially increase the proportion of college educated adults - particularly in our biggest metropolitan areas - Michigan will continue to trend downwards in the per capita income rankings towards the bottom ten.”

In Lou’s well-researched report entitled, “Young Talent in the Great Lakes: How Michigan is Faring”, he notes: “A vibrant central city matters - particularly for young professionals without children. But in both metro Detroit and Grand Rapids we need both the central city and its suburbs to be more attractive places for young professionals to live and work.” Lou’s bottom line: “unless Michigan, compared to the country, gets younger and better educated we will continue to get poorer.”

Frankly - there is no denying any of what Lou Glazer has been saying for a very long time. Please go to his website here and in particular read the report I referenced.

I still think I’m 35 years old though - still cute too! Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone - I’m signing off until the week of November 30th!

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Comments

As I affix my reading glasses to my 52 y.o. head, I read another excellent blog post from Diana. I did not weigh in on your earlier controversial (but, fun as hell to watch) posts, but I agree with your core sentiments. But I also think we tend to overdo the segmentation of our society in an effort to be "diverse". Community by its very definition is diverse and assumed to be so. So I say "embrace community" as a whole, not in parts or segments.

Posted by: Bob Taylor | November 20, 2009 4:50 PM