Knight Foundation

This article is cross-posted with permission from NextCity. If I could sum up my biggest problem with the current discussion around revitalizing and reenergizing our city centers across America, it’s this: too much Facebook, not enough flannel. I’m talking about that most neglected of demographics, Generation X. When civic innovators talk about revitalizing downtowns, we often talk about attracting and retaining talent. And when we talk about talent, you can be sure that we’re almost always talking about millennials, with occasional references to those highly skilled, empty-nest boomers. Millennials are “desirable” to marketers and to employers. While studies show that both millennials and Gen Xers — Americans born between 1965 and 1980 — are facing significant debt, Gen Xers have nearly six times the debt of our parents, and only 36 percent of us have exceeded our parents’ net worth. Referring to a recent Pew report on Gen X’s shaky financial security, generations expert Neil Howe noted that while millennials still have time to build wealth, “the generation I worry about is Gen Xers.” If you want a booming city, it seems, don’t go courting Gen X. But when it comes to building communities, Gen X, the latchkey generation — my generation — is an untapped resource. We trust networks — the neighborhood blocks that raised us — more than we trust hierarchies, and we are skilled builders of invisible infrastructure. Cities readily invest in physical infrastructure, pipes and roads and electrical lines, but the invisible social infrastructure — openness and healthiness in the interactions of the community — is also vital to making a city attractive to talented people, safe to explore at night, a worthy place to raise a family.