By demographics this means having a sufficient pool of bright and tech savvy millennials. This section of society is best placed to steer economic success, according analyst group The Zimmerman Companies. Zimmerman are a property-management company in Columbus, Ohio.
Digitally-savvy cities
The assumption behind attracting millennials is due to an association with people in this age range and an “entrepreneurial spirit” and the fact they are more likely to want to work in big cities. Recently a survey by Bentley University indicated that millennials sense that their career success requires them to be more nimble, independent and entrepreneurial than past generations.
The challenge of cities is to structure an environment that will appeal to young, enthusiastic entrepreneurs. According to April Zimmerman Katz one measure to aid this is to continue with a developing trend towards shared office space. This allows independent workers to use a dedicated work place, offering better advantages than working out of garages or the local coffee shops.
The idea of different cities having different characters and, as social structures, partly determining how life is played out within them is a common theme in sociology, drawing on the original ideas of cultural theorist Walter Benjamin. The idea is that as well as architecture and urban structures, people construct the essential character and presence of a city.
According to Zimmerman Katz, who spoke with Mobile Marketing: “Millennials often find that shared office space is a good fit for them because they pay a lot less than they would if they had to rent traditional office space.”
What are the advantages?
The advantages include developing a sense of community; a buzz around the ideas of innovation; helping millennials make life-style choices over where to live and whether to rent or to buy property; and fitting in with transport networks. In addition, shared offices often occur close to leisure facilities. Zimmerman Katz sees this as all about creating the right type of community to help nurture and support creative spirits.
The shared office space concept is relatively new; the traditional model is for one occupant per given area of office space. As a demonstration of how such a scheme can work in practice, Zimmerman Katz has opened three shared work spaces in the city of Columbus.
This tallies with an article in Time Magazine which indicated that millennials are moving into cities, but not necessarily biggest ones. Places like New York City and Los Angeles remain ‘millennial magnets’; however, smaller cities are also becoming popular locations for today’s 25-to-34-year-olds.
