What is Gen X looking for in a home?

Something less than $150,000 in the inner city or near an outer transit station.  It’d be low maintenance with high ceilings, both community and environmentally friendly.

Gen Xers prefer something stylish, efficient and flexible and did I say affordable?  They will not let homebuilders pre-determine their needs and feel they over-design new homes.  In fact, they’d like to customize their living spaces and want homes that express “Who I am.“  Non-bearing walls that can be easily changed to deliver no-additional-cost, customized space would be ideal in choosing new homes.

They’ll choose open floor plans over conventional/compartmentalized floor plans, bright over dark, and affordable craftsmanship (wood-trim, porches and exposed beams) over mass-production interiors.

They assume basic utilities means electricity, water, gas, cable and broadband internet.

What is Gen X looking for in a town?

It should be clear from yesterday’s blog:

Jobs, affordability, entertainment.
Jobs, affordability, entertainment.
Jobs, affordability, entertainment.

Jobs:  This is the starting point, but the good news is that companies (and city economic development agencies) are realizing that they also need to relocate where Gen Xers most likely want to live, which means affordability with great entertainment.  That works just fine with company executives as well.  Keep in mind that the fastest growing companies are the homegrown entrepreneurial ones that aren’t imported.  Invest in them.

Affordability:  A Builder Magazine survey shows that most Gen Xers can’t afford more than $155,000 for a new home, and they definitely want to own rather than rent.  That rules out Manhattan for starters, an oft-mentioned Gen X dream city.  The fact that they’re not dependent on buying single-family homes evidences a greater demand than supply.  Here’s some other ideas.

Entertainment:  The easy way is to already have the best in outdoor recreation, like Denver, San Francisco and Charlotte.  If not, then the key is building an entertainment mecca, much the same way Austin, Texas made itself the live music capital of the world.  Build your own center of enviable nightlife.

Where is Gen X moving to?

Well, since most Gen Xers are single/divorced (over 70%), they sure aren’t looking to settle down in a family-oriented neighborhood.  Here are the top 10 cities that Gen Xers are migrating to:

1. Orlando: An abundance of new tech jobs and limitless entertainment are hard to resist.
2. Las Vegas:  The entertainment and affordable living capital.
3. San Francisco:  Diversity, entertainment and hundreds of great dining experiences.
4. Denver:  The outdoor entertainment capital.
5. Charlotte:  Another job creation machine with great nightlife and outdoors.
6. Ft. Lauderdale:  Notice the theme?  Gen Xers follow entertainment, companies follow Gen Xers.
7. Raleigh:  Affordable, affordable with lots of jobs in the Research Triangle.
8. Phoenix:  Affordable, cutting edge nightlife, Silicon Valley outgrowth.
9. Portland:  One of the cleanest cities in the U.S., more breweries than any other as well.
10. Atlanta:  Gen Xers just can’t seem to stop talking about this city’s new edge… plus more job growth than any other city.

Where are they leaving from?  Orange County CA, Buffalo NY and Baltimore MD.  The former two don’t have much nightlife or edge, though Baltimore may make the list in a few years.

Investing in a town with invisible technology

Fiber optics: There are currently about a hundred communities (older listing) that are implementing a comprehensive fiber optic infrastructure.  What’s imperative to know is that the cost difference is negligible between providing a fiber vs. a copper network in new communities, yet the profit potential is tremendous.  In other words, establishing a fiber optic network in a new community is kind of a no-brainer.

Wireless: Wireless goes hand-in-hand with fiber.  One investment group is pioneering a BB-WAM - broadband wireless access mecca.  What this means is that anyone and everyone will have wireless internet access throughout a town’s public areas and commercial center.  The relatively low cost should be provided by a municipality the same way it funds roads, or it can be financed through a business improvement district.

Customer support!  Your town needs a community center that can demonstrate how to take advantages of these income-generating amenities.  Technology is often useless without a human to showing you how to use it.

Free wireless internet for all - on Newbury Street

There’s already a well-established market for going wireless (making technology invisible) at home and at the workplace, but even at your local bakery?

If you frequent Newbury Street in Boston, chances are you’re pretty productive as well, as many of its cafes and shops provide free wireless internet access.  Thanks to the work of the Newbury Open Network, there’s a national trend afoot to provide wireless internet access at every public establishment, as common as a bathroom or a payphone (remember those?).

Even Panera Bread is offering free wireless internet at its cafes and bakeries.  Why?  For starters, it’s practically free for merchants to provide if they already have internet access themselves, and it’s invisible.  Second, as we head into the experience economy, providing reasons for people to visit and ‘get more than just bread’ is proving profitable.

CoolTowns start with fiber optics, not freeways

In the industrial age, the basic infrastructure is a road network with cars.  In the experience age (aka the CoolTown era), it’s a fiber optic network with people.  The good news is the fiber is invisible, the people aren’t.

Case Western Reserve University’s fiber optic network is setting the bar with gigabit/second access, 1000 times faster than a typical home connection.  What does this mean?  Major job creation for economically-disadvantaged communities if they get focused, perhaps on a program like this.

How does this create jobs?  Here’s one way to look at it:  If every Silicon Valley worker’s internet access suddenly and permanently slowed to 1/1000th the speed, it’d be disastrous to its economy.  Now just imagine it the other way around.

The beauty of fiber optic access (and its benefit of instant officing) is that it brings the romantic notion of a walkable community that much closer to reality, being that people may no longer need to commute by car as much, if at all.  I don’t and I love it.

Broadband = quality of life, jobs

Understanding that people will be more apt to use technology they don’t see, a town-wide broadband infrastructure may do wonders for the local economy and quality of life.

Quality of life:  For urban dwellers, a fast network means one less reason to have a car, probably our least invisible technology.  It essentially means you can work at home, or at your local third place w/ free wireless broadband.  This magazine focuses on achieving this quality of life.

Job creation:  I’m awaiting some studies from Corning proving that ultra-high-speed internet access creates more business opportunities and jobs than dial-up or even DSL/cable broadband, but I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise you. In fact, prospective home buyers of the progressive new Orenco Station in Portland, OR wouldn’t consider homes without at least broadband internet access, and this was well over five years ago.  When DSL goes down in my office of creative entrepreneurs, people simply don’t bother coming in.

Now, if you want to see accelerated job creation to revitalize economically-disadvantaged areas, implement that fiber optic infrastructure, which will be blogged tomorrow.

CoolTown’s invisible technology

CoolTowns are most definitely state of the art, and that means incorporating the latest, most useful technologies.  However, the more invisible the technology, the less afraid people will be to use them.

CoolTowns are first and foremost about building community and enabling face-face interaction.  That mindset just doesn’t seem as sincere when your friend across the table is talking through his cell phone headset while adding entries to his PDA, as both of you sit on a sidewalk flanked by dozens of cars (with hundreds more passing by).

CoolTown invisible technologies include a fiber optic underground infrastructure, wireless high speed internet throughout the town, high-tech walking shoes and parking garage stacking systems.  CoolTown bookstores would also carry Turn It Off: How to Unplug from the Anytime-Anywhere Office Without Disconnecting Your Career by CoolTown Guild member Gil Gordon.

Investing in Experience Towns

Using the Experience Town steps, here’s how an investment group looks to invest in their next generation communities:

1. Discover and extract commodities:  Utilize capital in institutional investment network, leverage student/graduate market of universities and seek currently undesirable/economically-disadvantaged sites.
2. Develop and make goods:  Team with the best urban designers to build a new urbanist neighborhood fabric, although more European/international in density/intensity.
3. Devise and deliver services:  Partner with leading main street retail managers that focus on unique local merchants, and provide $2M in local industry-focused economic development.
4. Depict and stage experiences:  Provide multiple “stages” and a $3M community center to serve as the town’s “experience agent”.
5. Determine and guide transformations:  Allow the community center to evolve as an invaluable tool by which its residents reach both their personal and business aspirations.

Steps to an Experience Town and beyond

The economic steps to achieving an Experience Town can be compared with the progression to self-actualization in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

1. Discover and extract commodities:  The land/site, financial capital.
2. Develop and make goods:  The physical town, ie New Urbanism.
3. Devise and deliver services:  The right mix of dining/shopping/entertainment tenants coupled with community center for the residents.
4. Depict and stage experiences:  The integration of the first three into both spontaneous and planned events, from a local third place weekly game of cards to a movie in the piazza.
5. Determine and guide transformations:  Diagnosing and transforming people’s aspirations, from losing weight to reducing stress, living richer or emotionally healthier, and starting one’s own business to being part of a warm and friendly community.