The arrival of a new year always prompts a deluge of lists talking about cities: places to visit in the coming year, places where it’s most expensive to live, places where it’s cheapest to live.

But attention to cities shouldn’t be a fashion of the moment. It’s an everyday commitment that is essential to making great places where people want to work and play and build their lives. It’s an intrinsic part of what we do here at Knight Foundation.

We’re unusual in the foundation world in that we are a national foundation with deep local roots. We work in 26 communities where our founders, brothers Jack and Jim Knight, once operated newspapers. The Knight brothers believed that informed and engaged communities are the key to a healthy democracy. That belief still guides our commitment to the cities the brothers cared so much about. However, with 63 years of experience behind us, we know that building successful communities isn’t easy.

Every day we sort through the demands of improving our communities, and we have to make tough choices. It’s not about good choices vs. bad choices. It’s good choices vs. better choices. Those are the tough calls, and that’s why we have a practical philosophy, embracing innovative tactics that build on proven strategies.

We support the success of our communities through investments that attract, retain and harness talent. We want to expand opportunity by increasing entrepreneurship and economic mobility, and we want to build places that bring people from diverse social and economic backgrounds together and that accelerate the growth of ideas.

This work manifests itself in different ways in our communities, although the fundamentals are the same. For example, in Detroit, we’ve partnered with local leaders, other foundations and even the federal government to help a great American city move forward. In Miami, it’s seen in our investments that connect and propel the city’s emerging community of entrepreneurs, makers and startups. In Macon, Ga., we’re continuing to help transform the College Hill Corridor and make a historic city a model for creating vibrant places.

This is just a glimpse at the work we do in our communities—which extend across the country, from San Jose, Calif., to Charlotte, N.C.—but foremost in our approach everywhere is this idea: Talent matters. The percentage of college graduates in our metropolitan areas explains 58 percent of the success of those communities, when we use per capita income as a measure. And those graduates—the talent—are the most mobile people in our society. When we need to attract new talent to our communities, those people are likely to be young, between the ages of 25 and 34.

Of course, talent isn’t the only indicator, but what attracts this group to communities in the first place? We know they want to live in lively city centers. For 40 years there has been a steady increase in the preference of these young adults for close-in neighborhoods near the central business districts of our metropolitan areas. In fact, 85 percent of millennials say they prefer urban-style living, and 68 percent of college-educated 25- to 34-year-olds say, first, they look for the place they want to live, then they look for a job. So, for our communities to compete, they have to offer the kind of lifestyle choices today’s young adults prefer: lively places with mixed uses, mixed incomes and streets that support walking, biking and the use of public transit.

But talent is more than being college educated, and it’s not limited to one demographic. Not having a degree or being out of work doesn’t diminish the potential of your contributions to building good places. Every time talent isn’t used it’s like an airplane taking off with empty seats. Our communities need all of the talent we have. Still, that’s just part of the formula.

Good places also make good talent more productive by supporting opportunity and the spread of knowledge. Last year I served on the jury for the Gensler Design Excellence Awards. Every program from every workplace finalist started something like this: We want a workplace where employees will collaborate and share ideas.

Why?  Because chance interactions can lead to new insights about everything from new market opportunities to new trends in art to new ways to apply technology. These dynamics also underpin the generation and successful development of new ideas in our communities. This robust engagement helps our communities get there, enabling people to make the places where they want to live, in real time.

As British economist Alfred Marshall observed more than a century ago, when there is a concentration of firms and workers in a place, they all become more productive and innovative because it is as if knowledge is “in the air.” So, that’s our goal, to help build places of opportunity, where knowledge is in the air. That’s part of the energy we feel in our communities like Miami where convenings, community breakfasts and co-working spaces attract people from around the world.

When knowledge is in the air, it has an effect on the entire community: People with less education do better economically when they live in communities with people who have more education. No matter who you are, you are better off if you have educated neighbors.

Research by Harvard economist Raj Chetty featured in The New York Times last year helped show why this matters. Chetty found that places where low-income people lived apart from middle-income people were also particularly likely to have low rates of upward mobility.

Now, if ZIP code is destiny, this will be a very different and disappointing country.  We will lose the magic that is the USA. We can’t do that. We can help keep that spirit alive by asking ourselves three questions every time we have to make a decision about building our communities:

Will this place we are making help attract and retain talent?

Will it encourage the sharing and creation of ideas?

Will it bring people of different incomes and backgrounds together?

If we can answer “yes” to those questions—if we are making places that make the most of talent and opportunity—every penny will be worth the investment, and our communities will be successful.

Carol Coletta, vice president of community and national initiatives at Knight Foundation