This week’s Wall Street Journal had an article on cities it described as “youth magnets.” Des Moines was one of the cities listed. According to the graph that they published, only 19 cities in the US have had more net migration of educated adults over the age of 25 (between 05-07).

“The worst recession in a generation is disrupting migration patterns and overturning lives across the country. Yet, cities like Portland, along with Austin, Texas, Seattle and others, continue to be draws for the young, educated workers that communities and employers covet. What these cities share is a hard-to-quantify blend of climate, natural beauty, universities and — more than anything else — a reputation as a cool place to live. For now, an excess of young workers is adding to the ranks of the unemployed. But holding on to these people through the downturn will help cities turn around once the economy recovers.”

The author of the Census report on these “youth magnet” cities, Rachel Franklin, says a critical mass of young professionals means a city has a “sustained attractiveness” for other young people looking for a place to settle down.

You can read the full text of the article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/ SB124242099361525009.html

Even for the size of our population, our own Des Moines Register still is consider the 74th most widely circulated daily newspaper in the country according to Good Magazine.

Forbes Magazine looked at quality-of-life measures to form the list. Here’s how the Des Moines area compared, according to statistics the magazine gathered:

• Income growth: 4.2 percent (No. 91 of 379).

• Cost-of-living index: 90.2 (No. 165 of 379).

• Culture index: 68 (No. 121 of 379).

• Crime per 100,000 people: 3,854 (No. 193 of 379).

• Unemployment: 5 percent (No. 48 of 379).

Forbes Magazine also rated Des Moines seventh among metro areas for best places for business and careers.

Today, MSNBC.com had an article about downsizing your life from a major metro metropolitan city to a mid-size city for a better quality of life.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29723949/

They contain only 20 percent of the U.S. population, but midsize metropolitan areas can be an appealing alternative to life in the big city….The study compared the 124 midsize metros in 20 statistical categories, using the latest U.S. Census Bureau data. The highest scores went to well-rounded places with healthy economies, light traffic, moderate costs of living, impressive housing stocks and strong educational systems.

These are the top 10 midsize metros in terms of quality of life:

1. Provo, Utah
2. Boulder, Colo.
3. Madison, Wis.
4. Bridgeport-Stamford, Conn.
5. Ann Arbor, Mich.
6. Ogden, Utah
7. Fort Collins, Colo.
8. Boise, Idaho
9. Colorado Springs, Colo.
10. Des Moines, Iowa

….Des Moines is a joy for commuters fed up with the hassles of big-city traffic. The typical Des Moines adult takes 19.7 minutes to get from home to his or her workplace, compared to more than half an hour in major metros such as New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Our city just got some great national recognition again. This time, Des Moines was listed as the highest-rated Midwestern market for small business vitality by the American City Business Journals Inc.

Des Moines ranked 22 out of 100 largest metropolitan areas based on a six-factor formula that includes population growth, job growth, small-business growth and small-business concentration.

For more details check out: The Best Places to Start a Small Business at BizJournals.com.

Five Questions With… is a series on DMweblife highlighting Des Moines area bloggers and their blogs! I was featured in last week’s edition.

Check out the article to see how I responded to the five following questions: 

• What’s the main reason you began blogging, and how has your blog changed or evolved in the time you’ve been keeping it?
• What aspect of blogging do you enjoy the most?
• What’s an activity besides blogging that you can’t live without?
• What’s the best advice – personal or professional – you’ve ever received?
• What’s something you’ve accomplished in the past five years that you are particularly proud of?
• And a final question: What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about Des Moines as a community, and to what degree is that misconception inhibiting our growth?

As seen on MSNBC.com, our own local downtown restaurant, Baby Boomers Cafe, is selling their chocolate chunk cookies out faster than can they can back them, thanks to our next president, Barack Obama.

The report quotes co-owner Rodney Maxfield, “Two months ago I was giving these cookies away, now, it’s like ‘I need two dozen cookies. I need four-dozen cookies.”

The Obama family frequented Boomers often last summer when he was hearing campaigning. Obama’s main office was next door to Boomers, and his staff made the cafe a second home. During his last rally here in Des Moines, his staff ordered about a dozen cookies for the family. That’s when word got out about their affection for the confection.

Now they are selling almost a 1,000 of these cookies a week.

Des Moines’ Mayor Frank Cownie, joined 901 other United States Mayors, by signing the Climate Protection Agreement. Under the agreement, Des Moines, along with the other signing cities, pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels over the next four years; strive to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol targets in their own communities; and to urge Congress to pass the bipartisan GHG reduction legislation.

The initiative was launched three years ago by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels to advance the goals of the Kyoto Protocol through leadership and action by American cities. The signing comes as President-elect Barack Obama issued a major policy statement on global warming.

Here is a list of mayors who signed the agreement.

On CNN.com today, there was an article that caught my attention, “25 Best Cities to Find a Job“. I wanted to see if Des Moines was on the list, especially with all the recent layoffs at major companies around downtown and some of the smaller mom-n-pop businesses closing up.

According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Job seekers are better off looking in such cities as Des Moines, as all of these cities registered the lowest unemployment rates in July 2008. With that date in mind, I think our statistics may not be so great for second half of 2008.

According to the BLS, here were Des Moines’ stats:

• Ranking 19th
• Unemployment rate: 3.5 percent
• Last year: 3.1 percent
• Job growth: 1.2 percent

Earlier this past week there was some chatter about a an article that appeared in the Kansas City Star. The article, KC Can Learn from Downtown Des Moines, by Kevin Collision, compares what Des Moines has done for downtown compared to what Kansas City has done. Here are a few excerpts from the article.

Bottom line: Anybody in Kansas City who believes we’ve done enough revitalizing our downtown over the past few years had better wake up. Regional cities such as Des Moines have been striving too, and, more importantly, they’ve been doing it consistently over a longer period of time.

It was 20 years ago that Des Moines civic leaders hired Mario Gandelsonas, a Princeton University scholar of urban design, to help the city come up with a plan to foster its downtown revitalization. The results have been impressive.

More than $2.8 billion has been spent downtown since 2000, much of it aimed at making the area more appealing to that educated, younger adult crowd with an appetite for urban living.

Factoid: While metro Des Moines is much smaller than metro Kansas City, 525,000 vs. 1.95 million people, its downtown has 77,000 workers vs. 100,000 in KC. The city can thank major employers, including the Principal Financial Group, Meredith Corp., Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., Wells Fargo Financial and the state of Iowa, for its downtown employment base.

With this article in mind, here are a couple of videos I found on YouTube that talk about what people like about Des Moines.

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