We Ruined It

With all this emphasis being placed upon citizen engagement, someone is going to have to figure out how to bring the younger generation into the process. It's likely they don't see themselves fitting into the city at all - not because of politics, but through the lack of opportunity and investment. And it's becoming increasingly likely that they won't remain in London, choosing instead greener pastures somewhere else. It's been a significant enough problem that one group - Emerging Leaders - was launched a while back whose key purpose is to work at retaining the young talent in the city.It’s hard to describe what’s really happening with those under 35 without coming to a sobering conclusion: we ruined it for them. In 1984, older North Americans made approximately 10 times more than those under 35. Today that number stands closer to 47 times. The years haven’t been kind to those of younger generations. Some observers have taken to calling it the “bleeding up” of national wealth. For three decades we have permitted a financial system to morph into a veritable ATM for the wealthy and the older generation. An economy developed over the decades that failed to invest in the future younger Canadians would aspire to. The rest of us enjoyed the economic ride, paying for it in part from the future opportunities that would have been there for the next generation.As late as my parent’s generation, the investments and hard work were passed along to their children in a way that advanced their interests over what had come before.Not anymore.The Baby Boomers - born between 1945 and 1964 - had it better than any other generation in history - at least as far as material advantage and goods and services went. In fact, the entire mixing of the various generations living in London at the same time has been fascinating, and each has a label. The Matures were born prior to 1945. They were characterized by a belief in loyalities, in the military order of things, and a workplace strongly embedded in the chain of command. Advancement was possible at almost every level of pursuit or employment so long as loyalty was maintained.The Boomers were different. Unleashed from previous norms by the successful conclusion of World War Two, they entered the promised land of significant government investments in things like hospitals, schools, universities, healthcare and pension benefits. Companies began investing significantly in research and development just as technology was taking us to the moon and into the womb. Deep oceans were explored, medicines developed, diseases vanquished, and post-secondary education made widely available. And there was money - boatloads of it, either through cash or the newly available credit cards.The Boomer generation likely went a little bit crazy in their material pursuits, driven often by a passion to give their kids everything. It didn’t really occur to people at the time that all the bling was actually being taken from the future.That future was the Gen Xers (early 1960s through the early 1980s) and the New Millennials (from mid-1980s into the early 2000s). While these last groups have fewer advantages than the others, they hold a distinct edge in other labels - Generation Y, Millennial Generation, the ME Generation, Generation Next, the Net Generation, or the Echo Boomers.London now supports an interesting makeup of the generations. Only 5% of the Matures are still active in the workforce, with many being owners or senior managers. The Baby Boomers are now filling in those senior positions left by retiring Matures - 45% of today’s workers are Boomers. The final 50% is constituted by the Gen Xers and the New Millennials.These last two groups have in many ways thrown past historical traditions to the winds. It only stands to reason that this would be their pattern since those old formulas don’t seem to work for them. Unemployment, declining post-secondary funding, less money, restricted credit - these and more cause these last two cohorts to think in ways different from their predecessors.Yes, the Matures and Boomers achieved some remarkable successes - but at what cost? Our fabulous shared wealth was largely bankrolled by the raping of natural resources and we have left in our wake the imposing challenge of climate change. Remarkable educational advancements were secured, but we have reached the stage where perhaps only one or two in a family can go to university - as if we’re moving backwards in time. Somehow the older generations managed to lose control of the public wealth in the country, leaving a shrinking middle-class that can no longer afford to provide opportunities for their children. By Boomers opting out of the democratic spectrum more and more, the Gen Xers and the New Millennials have been handed a political dog’s breakfast that is almost as well-known for its incapacity as its partisanship.So of course the newer generations are going to look at their future and their present quite different from what some expected. They’re saying, in effect, that the traditional definition of success isn’t theirs. In the process, they are defining work, civic responsibility, family, social democracy and community differently and in ways that not only fit their lifestyles but their values. In brief, they see their predecessor’s path to success not as a guide but a danger.So if we are truly serious about this latent talent in our midst, we are going to have to find a way to draw them into our engagement exercises - perhaps the most difficult challenge of all. We can talk all we want about building better, more inclusive communities, but if the next generation looks for opportunity elsewhere, London is likely to look more like a grey tsunami than a new wave of the future.