The Metropolitan Policy Program 2007: Rethinking the Federal Role
With more than a decade spent around the country developing the demographic, economic, and place-based framework with which to understand the challenges facing metropolitan America, we at the Metropolitan Policy Program are working to change the paradigm of how our nation conceives of and fosters prosperity.
A review of 2007 for the Metropolitan Policy Program shows many milestones and a solid foundation for 2008.
Over the past year, our research has solidified our view that four key assets—innovation, quality infrastructure, strong human capital, and quality places—are needed today to drive productivity of firms and workers, improve the wealth and opportunities of our families, and ensure we grow in ways that protect our natural resources.
Fully 83 percent of our population now lives in metropolitan areas which contain 86 percent of American jobs, driving the economy with their concentrations of knowledge workers, financial services, research and innovation, transportation infrastructure and immigrant strivers.
To achieve success in a globally competitive world, our cities and metropolitan areas can’t go it alone and need a focused, accountable (and smarter) federal partner.
In short, 2007 represents the year we synthesized our decade-plus research and policy learnings with the insights of many of our local, regional, and state leaders and private sector friends. As we enter 2008, our hope is to work with this network of political, civic, and community leaders to bring this message and experience to our federal decisionmakers and create some short- and long-term policy changes.
The Blueprint for American Prosperity
To that end we launched a national agenda this past fall—the Blueprint for American Prosperity: Unleashing the Potential of a Metropolitan Nation—recognizing the nation’s metropolitan reality and proposing new federal rules, tools, and flexibilities for local and regional leaders so they can leverage their area’s economic strengths, grow in environmentally sustainable ways and build a strong, diverse and resilient middle class.
For our metropolitan nation to prosper in a metropolitan world, our federal government must value and strengthen these economic juggernauts that drive and dominate our economy.
Only by organizing our currently fragmented investments in transportation, education and innovation—and targeting them where they will provide the greatest return, in metropolitan America—will America continue not only to compete, but to lead.
The first publication of the Blueprint effort is MetroNation: How U.S. Metropolitan Areas Fuel American Prosperity, a broad examination of the primacy of the nation’s metropolitan areas from air freight to innovation.
As part of the Blueprint, we have also created special partnerships and analyses to show how key regions of the country could also benefit from a renewed federal partnership. In that spirit, we at Brookings, with the governors, chambers of commerce, and other leaders continue to make great strides in building a multi-state effort to revive the Great Lakes region.
For instance, this past fall, the Great Lakes Economic Initiative followed the Vital Center with a cost-benefit analysis of cleaning up the Great Lakes and removing the environmental hangover from the region’s industrial legacy. Healthy Waters, Strong Economy argues that the natural amenities of the lakes could be leveraged to help the region reassert its global economic leadership. At the urging of several members of Congress, a number of presidential candidates recently publicly pledged to clean up the lakes.
Additionally, we are examining the states in the Intermountain West, which, unlike the Great Lakes states, are experiencing rapid population and job growth as well as an influx of immigrants. This report will examine the new realities facing the Intermountain West in matters of transportation, immigration, affordable housing, and water resources and provide a unifying vision for Western leaders, allowing for the formation of new multi-state collaborations and a more meaningful partnership with the federal government.
Overall, the Blueprint is designed to help federal leaders and their state and local partners adapt to rapid change. Over the next few years, the Blueprint for American Prosperity, in conjunction with its Leadership Council, will consist of a series of partnerships, public events, publications and outreach activities premised on one abiding conviction: The very assets needed to prosper today are rooted in our metropolitan areas—the nation’s interconnected web of cities, suburbs, and counties now home to more than eight in 10 Americans and their jobs.
Ultimately, we hope the Blueprint sparks a rich national debate about America’s future.
Though the Blueprint represented the program’s signature 2007 effort, we remained engaged in multiple projects across the nation—all informing the greater whole
Across the Country
Nationwide, the Metropolitan Policy Program continues to provide the context and framework for decisionmaking in metropolitan America.
In 2007, we looked at the aging of America, the pace of recovery in the New Orleans region, and the landscape of the contentious immigration debate.
In timely fashion, we also examined the implications of democratized credit for low-income households and the contours of the continuing credit crunch.
Other key efforts over the last year included:
· Restoring Prosperity in America's Older Industrial Cities. This report, part of a broader effort, aims to mobilize governors and legislative leaders, as well as local constituencies, behind an asset-oriented agenda for reinvigorating the market in the nation's older industrial cities.
· Massachusetts Mill Cities: The report by Mark Muro, John Schneider on in state partner MassInc, and others on ways to revitalize the “Gateway Cities” of Massachusetts was embraced wholeheartedly by the state’s governor.
· Metropolitan Economy Trends: To help state and local leaders nationwide understand their regional economies and the policy options available to them, we released several new products from our Metropolitan Economy Initiative. The studies examined the limits of offshoring for metropolitan economies and the relationship between inequality and the overproduction of housing.
· Working Families: New research found that the Earned Income Tax Credit, and increasingly the Advance Child Tax Credit, played important role over the first half of this decade in supplementing the wages earned by low-income working families—particularly in regions hardest hit by the economic downturn and subsequent slow recovery.
· Walkable Urbanism: New preliminary analysis by real estate developer and Brookings Fellow Chris Leinberger shed light on the presence of walkable urban neighborhoods in our nation’s cities and suburbs. His field survey of 30 metropolitan areas, accompanied by his new book, the Option of Urbanism, shows that the demand for walkable urban neighborhoods is on the rise and such demand are mostly likely met by development around rail transit lines.
· Aging Infrastructure: In the wake of the Minneapolis bridge collapse tragedy, many called for increased spending on our aging roads and transportation facilities. We argued, however, that before new money is spent the federal government must begin thinking strategically about transportation rather than spreading money around like peanut butter.
There has been continued impact from our work in Pennsylvania, which began in 2003. With a follow up report on that year’s Back to Prosperity, we worked with partner organizations to urge the state to address government fragmentation to ensure the fiscal sustainability of local municipalities.
Also, eighteen months after its release, the report Charting Maine’s Future: An Action Plan for sustainable Prosperity and Quality Places continues to reverberate throughout the state with voters passing key bonding measures as it recommended and legislators following suit.
No less than Down East magazine said, “If you haven’t read Charting Maine’s Future… you probably should.”
In Washington, D.C.
Closer to home, Brookings Greater Washington (BGW) continues to help the city and region’s leaders to better understand the issues and options before them.
During the past year, BGW focused on reducing poverty through improved workforce development programming, monitoring the implementation of year-old affordable housing policy recommendations made by a housing task force, initiating research on school quality options for the city, continuing to conduct research in support of improving the city’s medical safety net, monitoring the potential location of the federal Department of Homeland Security on the historic St. Elizabeths hospital campus, and analyzing major trends and population movement in the Washington region.
Strengthening Urban Markets
Also, the Urban Markets Initiative (UMI) continued in 2007 to identify information gaps that create barriers to investment in urban markets, develop collaborative solutions, and facilitate usage. This year the program focused on developing a constituency for alternative data in credit scoring, identifying new tools to understand economic performance in underserved retail markets, and building awareness of critical information gaps like informal economic activity.
Looking Ahead
Overall, the Metro program remains committed to advancing a holistic vision of metropolitan health and prosperity: productive growth that helps the U.S. maintain its economic leadership; inclusive growth that fosters a strong and diverse middle class; and sustainable growth that advances U.S. efforts to address climate change and achieve energy independence.
Now in our second decade of work, the program hopes to take these on-the-ground lessons to the national level in advance of the 2008 presidential election. It is time to demonstrate that the nation's economic prosperity is based on the health of cities and metropolitan areas and develop new federal and state reforms toward that end.
For our metropolitan nation to prosper in a metropolitan world, our federal government must value and strengthen these economic juggernauts that drive and dominate our economy.
Only by organizing our currently fragmented investments in transportation, education and innovation—and targeting them where they will provide the greatest return, metropolitan America—will America continue not only to compete, but to lead.
We are, in short, a full-fledged "Metro Nation"; it is high time to start acting like one.