HYPE ("Helping Young Professionals Engage," or on more than one occasion I've heard it revised tongue-in-cheekily as "Helping Young Professionals GET Engaged") is hosting an event on January 21 from 5:30 p.m. until 7:30 at Toad's Place called "HYPE Vision: If We Ran Richmond." I'm pretty sure the "We" refers to "Young Professionals." [ASIDE: I enclose "Young Professionals" in apostrophes merely because I am getting to that point where I'm wondering if my biological age disqualifies me from participation in anything calling on one to be young. Sigh. But enough of my mid-life crisis. Moving on....]
The e-flyer describes the event as follows:
If you ran Richmond, what would you change? If you ran Richmond, what would you celebrate? Join us at Toad's Place to help form our collective vision of Richmond.
Admission is $10 and gets you in, one drink, and discounts on drinks for the remainder of the event. I'm guessing the ultimate objective is to come up with a plan outlining how "Young Professionals" would run Richmond, sort of a la the charrettes that gave us the Downtown Master Plan.
Does anyone else remember a regional "visioning" process several years ago that was managed by the Greater Richmond Chamber, which produced a report called "The Young and The Restless?" It was modeled on Richard Florida's theories from "Flight of the Creative Class," a super-interesting book on what makes successful cities. Here's a May 2002 article summarizing his theories. Short version: Cities like Boulder, Portland, and Austin are successful because they are retaining their young, hip, highly educated professional class and attracting newcomers as well.
The HYPE event = shades of deja vu for me here. I wonder what happened to that "Young and the Restless" report? I thought it was REALLY interesting. I just remember one person's quoted statement that if Richmond could be a car, it would be an El Camino, because it didn't know what it wanted to be. That has stuck with me, I thought it was so clever.
If anyone can track down the link for the report, or the report in hard copy, I'd be happy to post it here. I have to say I think I can identify the sure sign that Richmond is (becoming?) cool and hip and trendy, and retaining the creative class. Others might view this development as one of the seven signs of the apocalypse. My theory: Coolness and success = direct proportion to the proliferation of tattoo parlors. Just one woman's theory, but I'm stickin' with it.
http://www.restlessyoung.com/yar/
Richmond's report is half the size as Providence but bigger than Tampa! I have no idea what that's indicative of...
Posted by: John | January 12, 2009 at 09:53 PM