When I was in Revelstoke, BC last year I met a number of people who had made the move out there from Toronto. When I asked if they missed living in a big city, pretty much everyone gave me the same answer: “No, I love it here.”

This past week when I was in Park City, Utah, I similarly met a number of people who had made the move from New York and other large cities. And when I asked them the same question, I heard statements like: “I used to live in New York, but then I got a life and moved out here." 

In these two examples, the obvious draw is the mountains. But it’s not like everyone just moved and became a ski bum. In fact, Inc Magazine recently published an article talking about Park City’s robust startup scene. People are figuring out how to combine hard work with the lifestyle they want.

What I find interesting about this is that it runs counter to the trend of young people preferring big cities. Here’s a quote from NPR:

“But affordable real estate and waterfront views don’t have millennials biting. They continue "a multigenerational pattern of young adults preferring more expensive urban areas over lower-cost rural ones because the lifestyles and opportunities in such places make the extra burden of cost worth it,” says Robert Lang, professor of urban growth and population dynamics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.”

However, some small towns clearly have a unique lifestyle advantage: mountains. And that seems to be a strong enough draw that some people are simply figuring out how to create the economic opportunities for themselves.

For me, this is yet another reminder that if you’re trying to attract the best human capital to your city or town, you need to think about lifestyle. And since young adults aged 18-34 are far more likely to move around than any other generation, you should also be thinking specifically about what this generation wants.

Here’s a chart from CityLab that shows how precipitously migration falls off (in the U.S.) once people finish school and get settled in a job:

Obviously, not every town or small city is blessed with mountains. But there are many lifestyle advantages that can be created. It’s for this reason that I keep talking about nightlife and Toronto’s laughable 2AM last call. Those are lifestyle things and we can do better.

If you’re into cities, then you’re likely familiar with the Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann.

He was Napoleon III’s urban planner and the man responsible for the Paris we all know and love today. Those broad avenues radiating from the Arc de Triomphe are his doing. His plans transformed Paris from a medieval city into what was considered to be, at the end of the 19th century, one of the most modern cities in the world.

What spurred this post is an exhibition currently on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. It’s on the photography of Charles Marville, who was, interestingly enough, initially commissioned to document Paris before Napoleon and Haussmann “destroyed” it.

In reading NPR’s summary, I was amazed to learn about the meticulous detail that went into the redesign of the city, which went all the way down to the gas street lamps that were rolled out following the “Haussmannization”of Paris. In fact, so much thought went into the appearance of these street lamps that their heights were actually modulated to match changes in street elevation; the effect being that as you looked down an avenue, the street lamps always appeared even and harmonious despite any ups-and-downs in the road.

But beyond street lamps, the exhibition also got me thinking about urban renewal as a broader concept. Today, I suspect that most people would consider Haussmann’s interventions to have been a positive thing for Paris. Before these changes, Paris was a cramped and crumbling medieval city.

However, while in retrospect these changes might seem positive, Parisians at the time hated what was happening to their city. The entire place was under construction. And if you’re a fan of Impressionism, you’ll know that many artists at the time began lamenting about the regularization of Paris. They yearned for the visual variety that once characterized the city.

But as any developer will tell you, change is not something most communities tend to embrace. In fact, it’s human nature for us to down play positives and play up negatives when faced with uncertainty (see Prospect Theory). 

And sometimes it’s merited. Fast forward to 1925 and you have yet another audacious Frenchman trying to destroy and rebuild Paris: Le Corbusier. Come to think of it, I wonder if he thought of himself as the next Haussmann. He certainly thought of himself as the man responsible for ushering in the next wave of modernity.

But while he didn’t execute on his Plan Voisin in Paris, he certainly left his mark on cities all across the world. The plan he intended for Paris, was more or less what we used to clear slums in a lot of cities. However it turned out to be a complete failure.

So I guess the moral of the story is that some change is good and some change is bad. But most of the time it’ll seem bad at first, making it hard to tell which is which.

When I was in Revelstoke, BC last year I met a number of people who had made the move out there from Toronto. When I asked if they missed living in a big city, pretty much everyone gave me the same answer: “No, I love it here.”

This past week when I was in Park City, Utah, I similarly met a number of people who had made the move from New York and other large cities. And when I asked them the same question, I heard statements like: “I used to live in New York, but then I got a life and moved out here." 

In these two examples, the obvious draw is the mountains. But it’s not like everyone just moved and became a ski bum. In fact, Inc Magazine recently published an article talking about Park City’s robust startup scene. People are figuring out how to combine hard work with the lifestyle they want.

What I find interesting about this is that it runs counter to the trend of young people preferring big cities. Here’s a quote from NPR:

“But affordable real estate and waterfront views don’t have millennials biting. They continue "a multigenerational pattern of young adults preferring more expensive urban areas over lower-cost rural ones because the lifestyles and opportunities in such places make the extra burden of cost worth it,” says Robert Lang, professor of urban growth and population dynamics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.”

However, some small towns clearly have a unique lifestyle advantage: mountains. And that seems to be a strong enough draw that some people are simply figuring out how to create the economic opportunities for themselves.

For me, this is yet another reminder that if you’re trying to attract the best human capital to your city or town, you need to think about lifestyle. And since young adults aged 18-34 are far more likely to move around than any other generation, you should also be thinking specifically about what this generation wants.

Here’s a chart from CityLab that shows how precipitously migration falls off (in the U.S.) once people finish school and get settled in a job:

Obviously, not every town or small city is blessed with mountains. But there are many lifestyle advantages that can be created. It’s for this reason that I keep talking about nightlife and Toronto’s laughable 2AM last call. Those are lifestyle things and we can do better.

If you’re into cities, then you’re likely familiar with the Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann.

He was Napoleon III’s urban planner and the man responsible for the Paris we all know and love today. Those broad avenues radiating from the Arc de Triomphe are his doing. His plans transformed Paris from a medieval city into what was considered to be, at the end of the 19th century, one of the most modern cities in the world.

What spurred this post is an exhibition currently on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. It’s on the photography of Charles Marville, who was, interestingly enough, initially commissioned to document Paris before Napoleon and Haussmann “destroyed” it.

In reading NPR’s summary, I was amazed to learn about the meticulous detail that went into the redesign of the city, which went all the way down to the gas street lamps that were rolled out following the “Haussmannization”of Paris. In fact, so much thought went into the appearance of these street lamps that their heights were actually modulated to match changes in street elevation; the effect being that as you looked down an avenue, the street lamps always appeared even and harmonious despite any ups-and-downs in the road.

But beyond street lamps, the exhibition also got me thinking about urban renewal as a broader concept. Today, I suspect that most people would consider Haussmann’s interventions to have been a positive thing for Paris. Before these changes, Paris was a cramped and crumbling medieval city.

However, while in retrospect these changes might seem positive, Parisians at the time hated what was happening to their city. The entire place was under construction. And if you’re a fan of Impressionism, you’ll know that many artists at the time began lamenting about the regularization of Paris. They yearned for the visual variety that once characterized the city.

But as any developer will tell you, change is not something most communities tend to embrace. In fact, it’s human nature for us to down play positives and play up negatives when faced with uncertainty (see Prospect Theory). 

And sometimes it’s merited. Fast forward to 1925 and you have yet another audacious Frenchman trying to destroy and rebuild Paris: Le Corbusier. Come to think of it, I wonder if he thought of himself as the next Haussmann. He certainly thought of himself as the man responsible for ushering in the next wave of modernity.

But while he didn’t execute on his Plan Voisin in Paris, he certainly left his mark on cities all across the world. The plan he intended for Paris, was more or less what we used to clear slums in a lot of cities. However it turned out to be a complete failure.

So I guess the moral of the story is that some change is good and some change is bad. But most of the time it’ll seem bad at first, making it hard to tell which is which.