What can Philadelphia do to Attract and Retain Millennials?

No other city has seen quite the growth of young people as Philadelphia: the number of 20-to 34-year olds in this city has increased by 100,000 from 2006 through 2012. Unfortunately, many of them are wary about life in the city — the dirty streets, the crime, and the perennially troubled school system — and the lack of career opportunities.

Mayor Nutter is giving millennials themselves a chance to create potential initiatives to help attract and retain young people in the city through the city’s inaugural Philadelphia Public Policy Case Competition. The goal is for college students to create a proposal for an initiative that is both realistic and impactful in the city, giving the students a chance to engage with public policy.

The competition is open to all undergraduate and graduate students in the Greater Philadelphia region and is managed by the Mayor’s Office of Policy Planning and Coordination and the Philadelphia Youth Commission. Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative and Campus Philly are co-sponsors.

“This competition is for college and graduate students, and as millennials themselves, they will be able to best speak to what the region needs to do in order to encourage more millennials to live in the Philadelphia area,” said Chaney Harter, program manager of student communications and social media at Campus Philly, in an email.

Undergraduate and graduates from any combination of schools must form teams of two to five members and submit a proposal of 800 words. Prospective teams can register for the competition at http://goo.gl/0rG2jB. Final proposals are due by Monday, March 24 at 5PM to policy@phila.gov.

“We opened the first Philadelphia Public Policy Case Competition to undergraduate and graduate students in the Greater Philadelphia region because a major goal of the competition is to build interest in and inspire a commitment to public policy among the next generation of Philadelphia’s leaders while, at the same time, soliciting relevant policy proposals that can improve our city,” said Maia Jachimowicz, policy director for Mayor Nutter. Four finalists will be selected to present their proposals to a panel of judges in City Hall on Friday, April 4. Judges include:

• Councilwoman María Quiñones Sánchez
• Clarence Armbrister, President of Girard College
• Alan Greenberger, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Commerce
• Deborah Diamond, President of Campus Philly
• Gloria Casarez, Director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBT Affairs
• Apu Gupta, CEO and Co-founder of Curalate

The first-place team will have the opportunity to present their proposal to Mayor Nutter and will be given tickets to a Phillies game in the Mayor’s box.

“We hope to see creative and innovative ideas from incentive programs for millennials, to amenities millennials would find compelling, to marketing and promotion ideas,” Harter said. “We’re very open and hope the competition creates some great new ideas and directions.”

Find out more about the case competition here.