The Observation Deck

Moved from Global Discussion. http://lakewoodobserver.com/forum/viewt ... highlight= where David Anderson writes:

Brain Drain question – What comes first: reseeding an educated population in a depressed city; having educated parents gain confidence in a failing urban school district; investment in middle to upper middle class housing; offering incentives for business and industry attraction, growth and retention?

This was a trick question. They all must happen in concert.

In concert to a degree yet otherwise certain factors are primary. For example, if a locale has X number of jobs that require credentialing at a specific level, to fill them with local candidates would have to do with the supply of such candidates, AND, whether those candidates are competitive with non-local candidates.

'Brains' either stay in or move to situations that benefit the person-with-a-brain. In the Cleveland area there are fields that require very educated persons and those fields will fill their high level jobs one way or the other.

Mobility for the sake of establishing a career tracks the level of achieved education. This is both commonsense and well-researched.

"One of the key issues is whether the Brain Gain is an appropriate target for policy action. If the drain of educated young people is merely the symptom of broader economic problems, then policy responses must focus on the root causes of the drain."

from Plugging the Brain Drain. A Review of Studies and Issues for Attracting and Retaining Talent (2001: Carnegie Mellon Univ.) http://www.smartpolicy.org/pdf/

Paul Gottlieb and Mark Fogart, CWRU, wrote an important paper, Educational Attainment and Metropolitan Growth
(200) http://www.milkeninstitute.org/pdf/GottliebFogarty.pdf

Cleveland's score on the New Economy Index, 29.5; rank=33
http://www.neweconomyindex.org/metro/cleveland.html

Compare to Austin, Texas, ranked #2.
http://www.neweconomyindex.org/metro/austin.html

Overwhelmingly, Brains do not hang around to wait for future developments.

If local 'high brain' jobs go begging among local job candidates, that's not a factor promoting brain drain. Tis a labor market issue. However if local supply is greater than demand then obviously the unchosen local candidates will be forced look elsewhere.

This is a perspective at the upper level.

The middle level question could be about how a region brings about higher graduation rates, promotes better matriculation rates, and, reinforces even the possibility of better educated locals being to able to develop their career locally.

Note that this does not present any substantial chicken-and-egg problem. The 'education side' of the challenge can be vigorously worked even if it is also the case that this better education will also promote the better educated having to leave because of the low supply of appropriate jobs.

The job side of the problem is complicated. But it's a bit of canard to say that the quality of Cleveland's workforce mitigates the area's attractiveness to entrepreneurial start-ups. If one starts a manufacturing company and one needs some high level talent, it can be hired whether or whether not the talent is here. If you need a 20-something Wharton equivalent MBA, you cruise the graduating class wherever it happens to be.

However, for example, many small manufacturers decry the quality of the local workforce. Many times this has something to do with finding people who possess a high degree of reliability, trainability, self-efficacy, (ie. drive.)

The cognitive requirements might be very modest. If this employer requires a BA simply as a gatekeeping requirement, the same employer may find it very hard to fill a job paying $25-35k a year. It's a mismatch between job and seeker. Overall, it's possible at this middle level that local graduates with BA's cannot find an appropriate job.

If the gatekeeping credential is a high school diploma, (and what a diploma reflects does not necessarily certify 'skilled' anything,) then it seems we've left the land of brain drain and entered the problematical reality of, for example, employers, such as they are, who want good workers but do not want to provide those good workers with a living wage.

At the level of Lakewood, the community is largely a place where people who work, live. In other words, Lakewood is, in essence, mostly a bedroom community. Whether a community is an attractive place for 'brains' to live and sleep, or not, seems to count for something, both in the directions of the ambiance of the community and toward how Lakewood might capture the youthful brainy tribes.

Let's presume that a community is advantaged by capturing new residents (of the blue-orange-green,) tribes. Two things jump out: one, this means young brains not from Lakewood move to Lakewood to, in effect, sleep, and, two, the total effect is not very likely to be intergenerational. Which is to say the most upwardly mobile of these persons will--someday--move away.

(I'm reminded of early entanglements with visionary alignment researchers over the fact that the intergenerational assumption is specious in the current economic dynamics.)

Stephen Calhoun wrote: Overwhelmingly, Brains do not hang around to wait for future developments.

Stephen (good to see your name pop up)

While your post would indicate at some level that "brains" seem smart enough to move along.

I think from past experiences that "brains" have nearly an impossible time thinking out of their box, built by books and extremely limited experiences. That their ability, to work outside their box, is nearly impossible.

They have very little flex flow or muscle to use in the flex, they run, taking the easiest route out to where they feel most comfortable. Where others who perceive themselves as brains congregate. The safety net of other "brains" all stuck in their own little boxes of learning.

I could be wrong, as often I am.

Does a bedroom community need industry or access more?

It would seem to me that a bedroom community needs easy access to everything around it, as opposed to moving it into the bedroom.

I could be wrong, as often I am.

To tie Lakewood's future to Cleveland's is to grab the anchor for security on a sinking ship.

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Jim, 'brains' is a blazingly generic stand-in term for some combination of: cognitive ability, education (no matter how it was achieved,) and, extended to performance, the capabilities having to do with creating, producing, leading, etc.

Sure, smart people can be very narrow in their outlook, stuck in the box of their specialization, and inexperienced in deploying the tools of 'thinking outside of the box.'

On the other hand, there's also nothing about being brainy which necessarily sticks somebody in a box.

I am myself a cognitive elitist. (Major believer in reading and lifelong education!) Mediocre 'brains' can think outside of the box. But the research is in, (see the work of Robert Sternberg,) and it basically echoes the commonsense view, that the less cognitively endowed are disadvantaged across all sorts of activities.

I'll highlight one of the most mission-critical activities with a direct bearing on this sense. The ability to criticize one's own self, to be reflective, to construe one's own behaviors in a context disentangled from those same behaviors, is a hallmark of the cognitive complexity associated with being brainy. Furthermore, if one can smartly view themselves, these same capabilities are ramified in social relations.

By the way, the problem you speak of about the brainy (perhaps) being prone, (more prone?) to being in a box, is researchable.

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My own opinion is that Lakewood will forever be tied to the regional economy simply because the overwhelming majority of Lakewood residents go to work outside of Lakewood. In fact, this is researchable too, and I would anticipate that the brainy Lakewoodite is more likely to work outside of Lakewood than in Lakewood.

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I've already suggested more brains helps if Lakewood wants to be more a catch basin for the various types of cognitive elites.

This said, certainly there is plenty of opportunity to fold local economic development into a vision of Lakewood obtaining more high quality employment opportunities, be they industrial, cultural creative, entrepreneurial, professional, etc..

If such thinking is on the edge of the box, why not hop over the side and suppose that any empty building or vacant storefront might be viewed as a underexploited feature. So: artist, dancer, multi-media producer, and other creatives might respond very possibility to cost-effective space.

I always thought the slow growing diversity of Lakewood might help support it continuing to grow its ethnic eateries. My office overlooks Larchmere Blvd. (in Cleveland,) and its four blocks have, for decades, anchored a critical mass of antique galleries.

We're on the same page. But where I am less sanguine is in non-Lakewood specific understanding about how, in a sense, "post-modern" the West has become. I don't mean this in academic terms, simply intend to convey that ambitious folks today tend to have the experience that a career may demand several acts of self-creation, that one leases their skills, that career development is entrepreneurial, that one may have to turn on a dime.

This is against the olden verities of intergenerational coherence, the varieties of 'village' 'small town' traditionalism, and, works against, (to borrow a term) from Ken Warren, that the imago of a community is stable in a thoroughgoing way.

(Imago, roughly, holistically represents local factors that promote a community's distinctive patterns of human development year in and year out.)

These two positions tug at each other. So, one could argue both: Lakewood needs to restore and protect traditions, and, Lakewood needs to become more permeable to the creative currents off-shore, as it were.

Now, you might be moved to answer that "Lakewood has plenty of home grown creativity." I'm sure this is true, but to go all the way back to your introduction of thinking outside the box, I would assess creativity and novel thinking simply in terms of how rich a critical picture such brains would draw, were they asked to do so.

Whereas, the idea that Lakewood has somehow transcended the advantages gained by the benefits of new faces, and will deploy its outside of the box sensibilities to disconnect from its region and become self-reliant in a severe, hermetic turn inward, seems, undoable, nor worth doing.

You can see what I'm connecting up here. If, as you say, brains are fickle and congregate together and express their own narrowness, and the alternative is, say, post-brainy, then I wonder just what kind of person you'd like to move to Lakewood and join in on the fun.

See, I don't have a skin in the game. So, it's easy for me to suggest that Lakewood is: everybody who lives there, everybody who works there, and everybody who visits there, and everybody who ever lived there, and everybody who is buried there.

Alternately, as I've mentioned to Slife, over the big cycles, it's all about the churn, what gets churned up, and what possibilities are evoked.

Stephen

I was not the person to bring "brainy" into the conversation.

I was the one to underline, that most of the so called, "brainy" people get stuck in their level of expertise, booked learned or not.

A carpenter will try to build the world with hammers and nails, the writer with poetry, the publisher with a paper... It is not a case books, it is a case of narrowing horizons and views. It is similar to the way they trained fleas for a flea circus, or elephants next to each other.

The fact that you recognize Lakewood as a bedroom community also underlines the fact that there is not industry or commercialism here. It is a city where people, sleep, eat and relax, then every morning get up and go to work, here or anywhere.

While common sense sees a city that needs everything ala Sim City, the truth is far different. We are not moving Lakewood away from Cleveland or the county. I am thinking the best plan is to move ahead without counting on Cleveland, Rocky River, East Cleveland, etc. To make plans with these cities in mind is suicide. We build the cake, let their success if it ever comes be the icing on the cake.

As for room of ED, years ago we were told the only reason we can survive is with a strip mall, errrrr multi-use mall. Retail spinning down. We were then told Office Space, this too is now gone. One thing since you left is AGS specializes in software that does away with office space and the overhead. I have to believe that others are doing similar projects. So retail gone, office leases gone, and industry not coming back in our lifetime, where do we go? Luckily Lakewood is still perfect with our rentals and "bedroom community."

As you were in the discussions from day one, and are fully aware of the VAL. I am sure you also recognize how dead on we were 5 years ago.

How it plays out is anyone's guess, but I am willing to take strong backs, over "brainy."

But as we know, I am not "brainy" and we love to but heads. My empty noggin, against the good doctor's filled one.


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Jim,

Luckily Lakewood is still perfect with our rentals and "bedroom community."

And the 24+ mostly linear miles of commercial space.

We're actually on the same page but just at different spots of that page.

There are many different kinds of intelligences and each, like the dudes grasping at the elephant, has something to point out.

As for the entanglement with 'outside of Lakewood,' my point is that you have churn and so what brings people to live in Lakewood is an important factor. Call these refugees the first time Lakewoodite factor.

I agree completely that Lakewood's sense of itself informed by refusing to be just another NEO plantation is critical to the mission.

And, my friend, I will not again underestimate your smarts or what's in your own head!

Stephen Calhoun wrote:Jim,

Luckily Lakewood is still perfect with our rentals and "bedroom community."

And the 24+ mostly linear miles of commercial space.

We're actually on the same page but just at different spots of that page.

There are many different kinds of intelligences and each, like the dudes grasping at the elephant, has something to point out.

As for the entanglement with 'outside of Lakewood,' my point is that you have churn and so what brings people to live in Lakewood is an important factor. Call these refugees the first time Lakewoodite factor.

I agree completely that Lakewood's sense of itself informed by refusing to be just another NEO plantation is critical to the mission.

And, my friend, I will not again underestimate your smarts or what's in your own head!

Stephen

Of course we are on the same page but in different parts of the page. This has been a running theme in all of our discussions.

While we have 24 miles of linear retail(where did you get that number?), it is like a fine line. In some places barely 100' thick, if that. Which backs it up to the fragile bedroom community. Which is really where the Development problem begins. How to build out in a built out community? This makes the math that much harder to work. Like the pristine forests of Washington and Oregon, you can commercialize for the quick $$$, but you loose much of the wild life ie families. (the peninsula makes the most sense)

Yet the massive river of 40% rentals that flows through Lakewood, must be optomized to churn the waters, while fishing for the "good neighbor" to bring to the bank, and get them a home they can thrive in. It is the solid shores or banks of this community that must be prepared to let those know these are safe, clean and healthy waters where safe, clean, fun are the foods that then can depend on.

In the end we are talking the same things, me with the Irish Kabuki Street Warrior's perspective, and you with the Eastern accent of the good doctor on loan from the land of the Heights. Sister cities with brothers that think along the same lines.

As you so eloquently put it, and now appears in our Mission Statement. "We must know more about this city than anyone ever knew about any city." For in that, we become comfortable in our our skin of Lakewood, and can better define the brand, and then reach out to build that brand and our city stronger.

In this region's rush to the bottom, it becomes even more important for Lakewood to do this quickly, with the look and UNDERSTANDING of what the future holds. As we have often talked and debated over there is no future to be the same as the other 51 communities in the region. As others rush to to be sluts for the developers of mediocre dreams and false hopes. Lakewood needs to go ina a very different direction.

As I was speaking with a member of Lakewood Alive on Mainstreet, very much in agreement. 30 years ago, retail might have worked, though I doubt it. Then with the report from Grow Lakewood that retail was not the way, office space was. At the time seemed extremely safe and reasonable. Today the future belongs to the bedroom community, where execs, entrepreneurs, start-ups, home-based businesses, and families can live, work and play side by side, forever.

If we look back into the earliest days of this project, so much that was projected has come true. We are certainly going to hit $5.00 a gallon for gas, we have witnesses the collapse of the entire business end of Cleveland. We have seen the shopping districts move into other communities and leave and fail just as quickly. We have seen the revolution of the Internet grow faster than some people thought and slower than other people dreamed. We have seen the dollar go down the drain, and the future of that dollar fly out the window. It would seem that the future of Lakewood, and that of our sister cities is to become the oasis in the desert now called CLE+.


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Great reply.

btw, the guesttimate '24 miles' is roughly both sides of Detroit and Madison minus residential, wiggling in north/south stuff.

I don't propose a retail solution, although how to keep the Lakewood dollars home is part of a complex prospect. Actually, I just wonder about the flux of space, and churn, and devotion.

Nor should fantasies from the east count for much. However, my completely personal fantasy is general and applicable wherever. It's based on communal activities, lowering consumer footprints, elevating consumption of arts and entertainment and, especially, lifelong learning, eating locally homegrown foodstuffs, friendliness and self-awareness being deployed as the main security system, and, rigorous critical consciousness when it comes to both governing institutions and implementing innovations.

The challenges of self-knowledge--buckled up?--writ to the level of active learners in a community touch upon several tense features.

One, is the so-called Shadow, the disowned aspects (of Lakewood;) about which it is the sane response to keep that stuff in its black bag. "Why do you want to know THAT?"

Two, is that the thrust of 'development' promoted by self-knowledge may not be oriented to 'conserving.' "Kill the messenger."

Three, is that the multiplicity of knowing processes will clash, and there may not be anybody able to step back and look at the whole dance. "Big picture? But, it's so simple!"

Struggling to keep up here.

One thing I would like to know, what are the Shadow (disowned) pieces you are referring to.

Stephen

If there is one thing we both know. It is a fool that goes into battle, not looking at the war and understanding the big picture. These secret is not in the battles but in the war. Battles are used for a variety of reasons, some to give others a false sense of security and hope. Others just to keep busy minds and hands, busy.

The great sage and good doctor from the east, has valuable comments on the health of the Wood. After all we are both sharing the "Slaughter of Cities" while watching it firsthand, from our front row seats.

While the shadow would seem to know what is healthy, we both understand, the only way to fully breathe life back into both the banks and the river, is with a good strong dose of sunlight, and a mixing of the blood both old and new.

The secret is to keep enough old around that we can put new in perspective, while teaching them the ways of the ancients. Otherwise it becomes the compass that has lost it true magnetic north and south.

Then while many see the truth, those hat watch know the tool, is broken and even the warrior, the doctor, the wizard and the bear cub cannot move a feather, what alone the great bolder of death.


FWIW


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