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Richard Florida
by Richard Florida
Sun Aug 20th 2006 at 9:19am UTC

Can Cities Lure Expats Back?

More on the question of mobility, this time from the WSJ… which offered a story about the City of Buffalo’s attempt to “reclaim” its natives sons and daughters by throwing a homecoming event. The event/marketing campaign, culminates with Buffalo Old Home Week 2006, and has made great use of online tools and email lists such as a 68,000 strong “Buffalo Bills Backers” list.

Trust me, lot’s of places are trying this, including the city of Omaha, NE and the state of Iowa which the article mentions. It’s an uphill battle. It will be very, very hard slogging against the forces that are spurring the flow of talent and the means migration.

The 285,000 new college grauates that moved to New York City between 2000-2005 that I blogged about the other day, is about the same as the population of the ENTIRE City of Buffalo (which had a peak population of 590,000 in 1950).

Quote of the article come’s from Tammy Bialek-Lehre, a Buffalo native who left to be a Las Vegas-style showgirl overseas and is now a chriopractor in Evanston, Il. Tammy plans to move back to Buffalo because, “I feel a void no other city can fill.” Will Buffalo organizers will find others with similiar sentiments? Check out the online Buffalo expat discussion that is taking place — click on ‘read repat stories’ link.

(posted by Richard)

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 20th, 2006 at 9:19 am and is filed under Cities, Talent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

8 Responses to “Can Cities Lure Expats Back?”

  1. Wendy Says:
    August 21st, 2006 at 12:42 am

    This seems like a strategy worth trying if a formerly-depressed city is now booming. As cities struggle to compete for talented workers (who will then lure employers), they’ll need to use any edge possible.

    The key is providing the career opportunities combined with whatever lifestyle choice people are making.

    Incidentally, this is also happening in Canada: the Saskatchewan, government is trying to lure workers back to Saskatoon and Regina from Calgary..

    http://www.projectalberta.com/board/viewtopic.php?p=21576&highlight=

  2. Sandy Says:
    August 21st, 2006 at 5:24 pm

    Perhaps the notion of “luring expats back” could be viewed in a slightly different context. People may have a personal connection to their college town. If the network development efforts are made, perhaps ideas and/or investment may be a different level of contribution expats can make. Capital and ideas are as mobile as people.

    I read an ED article describing a city in NY providing the opportunity for expats to maintain contact with others in the region, share development ideas and, in some cases, invest capital in projects. In one case, several businesses opened branches of their successful companies in these towns after being asked by city/college officials. Perhaps tapping the experiences and ideas of expats is one benefit of this approach. (Furthermore, they can tap their social networks, and bring a guest to a homecoming event.) I would think this approach may provide emerging opportunities beyond the relocation intent.

  3. David Says:
    August 22nd, 2006 at 8:18 am

    Sandy,

    that is a really interesting case. Any idea which cities did it or where I can find that article?

    thanks

  4. Sandy Says:
    August 22nd, 2006 at 9:24 am

    David: Let me hunt through my files- believe I have a hard copy of this article. Off the top of my head, I think it was Corning, NY.

    Rich has a link to sohodojo.com- they wrote a great piece on Iowa’s brain drain a couple of years ago. Jim and Timlynn reframed the issue of the brain drain- their points were quite compelling. I’ll try to find a link to their paper.

  5. Sandy Says:
    August 22nd, 2006 at 9:29 am

    David:

    Here is the link to sohodojo’s
    Creatively Rethinking Rural Depopulation:

    http://www.sohodojo.com/rural-depopulation-in-network-society.html

    Correction- this was for Montana.

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