A Task Force on Hippness

Montgomery County is establishing a task force to figure out how to make the county more hip. According to this article by Bill Turque in The Washington Post, “County Executive Isiah Leggett wants to make Montgomery more competitive with the District and Arlington County for the coveted millennial demographic, or “Generation Y” — roughly defined as those between ages 18 and 34.”

“The county’s concern is reflected in the data. According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 36 percent of Arlington’s population is between ages 20 and 34. Montgomery’s proportion is 19 percent, trailing the District (31 percent), Prince George’s County (23 percent) and Fairfax County (20 percent).”

It’s an even bigger problem here in HoCo where only 17% of the population falls in that age group. Even more disconcerting is that this is a drop from the 2000 census when it was 19%.

“We are aging faster than we probably anticipated,” Leggett said. The traditional, suburban Montgomery will not disappear, he said, but for the tax base to grow — and to help support a burgeoning aging-in-place population — a new county has to take root alongside the old.”