When Lebron James played his first game as an ex-Cav in Cleveland earlier this month, he was booed by 20,000 aspiring brain-drain border guards still upset about his decision to take his talents to South Beach… and out of Ohio. Ironically, the native Clevelanders I heard complain about this most were actually ex-pats who had taken their talents to Chicago years before. In doing so, they’d followed a well-worn path out of northeast Ohio – one so commonly understood that it could be invoked last year without any real explanation in those viral “Cleveland Tourism” videos.
As blogs like Burgh Diaspora rightly and routinely point out, “brain drain” is a canard when framed simply as a fear about talented native young people leaving a city. The aim of cities like Cleveland and Pittsburgh should be to attract migrants from elsewhere to bring in new talent, not to fret about their own citizens migrating elsewhere. “Rust Belt Chic” shows how young people are already moving to the region to arbitrage the rust belt’s cheap costs of living and the often hidden economic opportunities.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Reverse Brain Drain: When Southerners find their way North | Rust Wire
