Another mystifying exercise in logic from this Harvard economist-slash-urbanist.  He cites a study by the Federal Reserve Bank's Alicia Sasser about graduates leaving the state.  He decides that the reason for this loss is that they don't have enough fun here as students. This gives him a lead to talk about two of his pet causes, late-night T service and the desirability of liquor licenses as fees.

Then he goes on to spring the Big Idea: "a student city," somewhere in Greater Boston (like, say, BOSTON!), which sounds like a huge dorm complex with student-type stores in a self-contained, hermetically sealed enclave where the kids can let loose their inherent youthful irresponsibility and violent aggression (??), and run rampant without bothering to learn about, or fit in with, the community. Oddly, he thinks that "A collective student-city would give students a sense of place and lead to more regional identity."  This proposal would serve his third pet cause, how to let developers circumvent community planning and zoning ("bypass local land use controls").  Of course, this applies only to cities: "Skills predict urban success." So we won't need a huge, enclosed, fortress student-city in, say, Wellesley, where Prof. Glaeser lives. Skills, perhaps, are not necessary for high-end suburbs' success.

Well, the first solution that came to MY mind when I saw this opinion piece was, if we want to keep the best minds local, we should keep the local minds best.  Yet we have for decades (since white flight, actually) deliberately cheated our city’s students of a decent (never mind excellent) education, and waste tens of thousands of minds every year.  Gosh, those are actually the perpetrators -- and victims -- of the violence he mentions as an excuse for building pleasant enclaves for students from elsewhere!  Why don’t we build beautiful student-cities for those poor black kids?! We could call them....NEIGHBORHOODS! With shops and everything!  And since the local land use controls are already null in those areas due to, oh, what is it called....oh yes, “blight,”  all the ingredients are there!  What?  Oh, right.  I see. Those are not the best minds.  We knew that from... their birth.

Obviously, Glaeser has a list of solutions to the vexing problem of cities (which he assiduously avoids in both residence and work, but I'm sure he reads a lot about them, and he can see Boston from his office window), and is looking for problems that would justify those solutions.

However, the Sasser study he cites as the spur for all this cogitation clearly documents that the reason for the graduate exodus is lack of good jobs. 

Prof. Gleaser, please write a piece on how this country, state, and the city can solve the structural problem of unemployment.  Please consider the role of the military and prisons in disguising the real extent of the problem, the concept that "full employment" really means no less than 6% unemployment so that employers always have the upper hand, and the fact that the millions of "inner city" students -- who could be contributing to the society (and the economy) -- are systematically thrown away well before college.  That's a real problem, and we could use a good Harvard economist on it.