According to this MinnPost article which discusses what makes people attached to a particular city. The article discusses with Katherine Loflin, a placemaking expert and lead consultant for a Gallup and Knight Foundation study on what drives attachment to a city. While the results of this study are interesting, most people may disagree with the findings.

From the article:

If people can find jobs and reasonable places to live, they’ll be attached enough. Worrying about quality of life, amenities, public spirit and all that squishy stuff seems a bit trivial in an economy that still recovering from one of the worst recessions ever.

But Loflin makes a business case for love of a place. These days, those people most likely to drive the growth of a city, namely young people between the ages of 25 and 34, have reprioritized. Quality of life registers high on their list of necessities. Corporations are finding that increasingly they have to sell talented recruits on the place where they would be relocating as well as the job.

As a hiring manager working in a field which is showing rapid growth and high competition during the turned down economy, I have been fighting to both recruit and retain people for my teams. While my experience is limited and certainly not as wide as the number of people looked at by this study, my experience in no way mirrors what Loflin has said. Talented recruits just out of school or with less than 10 years experience have just as much desire for high salary, regardless of their current location in our outside Minnesota, as anyone else I have talked to recently. You can sell them all you like on the greatness of the MSP metro but they know two things: money talks and it’s freakishly frigid here. When recent grad students are requesting six figure salaries without more than a few months of relevant real-world experience and getting offers from elsewhere with it, I can give you a 99.999% guarantee that this study is bunk.

What do you think about this one? Would you pass over a much higher income elsewhere just so you could stay where the people are? Are you surprised that recently minted masters-level students without much relevant experience are receiving such high offers when you hear in the news that this group is so hard pressed for cash lately? What attaches you to the MSP metro? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear what you have to say.

A couple of red traffic lights against a blue sky originally uploaded by Horia Varlan

According to a recent SunThisweek Letter to the Editor from a Burnsville resident, the lack of a modern traffic signal coupled with a sign forbidding right turns on red has created a situation where lengthy delays for no good reason are frequent. One has to wonder whether most, if not all, traffic signals should be upgraded and have right turn restrictions eliminated.

From the Letter to the Editor:

Isn’t it time to rethink the no-right-turn sign at the foot of the southbound exit of I-35E as it controls traffic entering County Road 42?

[...]

Currently, I estimate that one out of every five drivers disregards the no-right-turn sign and I can completely understand their frustration after waiting, in some instances, as long as a minute and a half, while no westbound cars are even visible at this intersection.

How many times are you sitting at a light about to turn right and realize you’re forbidden to do so by the tiny little sign that mocks you as no traffic approaches? This is often the case at many lights in the state, especially those that ignore or simply do not support detection of cars at an intersection with no cross traffic. It’s not only frustrating but increasingly irrelevant now that we have the ability and, in many cases, the built-in support for smart signals which simply are not doing their jobs. For once I agree with a Letter to the Editor writer entirely. This, and most other SOTR signals, need to be reevaluated for right turns on red and have the smart technology installed or utilized as intended.

What do you think about this one? Do you agree that forbidden right turns on red is generally useless? How often do you see people ignore the tiny signs suggesting they do otherwise? Do you think more often than not signals should be detecting cross traffic presence and changing the light to alleviate stacked traffic in the other direction? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear what you have to say.