What Is the Federal Role?
Metropolitan areas cannot resolve their challenges alone. Counties, cities, and suburbs operate within a national policy framework, and face challenges bigger than their own capacities. What’s needed is a new partnership between federal, state, local, and private-sector players to help metropolitan areas build on their economic strengths, foster a strong and diverse middle class, and grow in environmentally sustainable ways. Over the next year, we will publish a series of policy papers outlining specific federal reforms.
Reports
Blueprint's first major report, "MetroNation: How US Metropolitan Areas Fuel American Prosperity," is available now. Additional reports will be available starting in 2008.
MetroNation: How US Metropolitan Areas Fuel American Prosperity
For all their aggregate strengths, major metro areas face a series of troubling challenges, and display a series of negative characteristics, that serve as a drag on our national prosperity. Our metropolitan areas could unleash greater national prosperity if policy promoted their adaptation to increasingly dynamic economic and demographic change. We need a new federal-state-metro partnership appropriate to today's fast-changing realities that helps metropolitan America to resolve key challenges, and to grow in more productive, inclusive, and sustainable ways.
Read More - Federal Chapter (PDF)
Full Report
Unleashing America’s Metropolitan Potential: Towards a New Federal Partnership for Prosperity
The second signature report in the Blueprint initiative, this companion to “MetroNation” will present a framework for reform of the federal system aimed at empowering metropolitan areas to adapt to change and innovate to increase the nation’s prosperity. (available Spring 2008)
Policy Brief Series
In early Spring 2008, the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program will begin publishing a series of Blueprint policy briefs that argue for specific reforms in selected areas of federal policy. Read about the entire series (PDF). Topics to be examined include, among others:
Productive Growth
Boosting Productivity, Innovation, and Growth: Through a National Innovation Foundation
Clusters and Competitiveness: A New Federal Role for Stimulating Regional Economies
Making Markets Work in Inner Cities: A Next Generation Policy Agenda
Pathways to Postsecondary Success: Improving Educational Transitions in Metropolitan America
Knowledge that Motivates: Using Information to Catalyze Metropolitan Problem-solving
Inclusive Growth
Platforms for Social Mobility: Rethinking U.S. Workforce Housing Policy
Metro Raise: Strengthening Tax Credits to Help Low-Income Urban and Suburban Workers
A Federal Agenda to Unleash Innovation and Entrepreneurialism in Urban Schools
All Integration is Local: Advancing Immigration Policy with a National New Americans Initiative
Investing in the Divested: A New Financial Services Policy for Building Wealth and Prosperity
Promise of Prosperity: Supporting Community Compacts for Human Capital and Economic Renewal
Sustainable Growth
Connecting America: A Transportation Policy for the 21st Century
Greening the American Dream by Extending Greenbuilding to the Middle Class
A Greener Way to Develop: Policies to Evoke More Energy-Efficient Land Use Patterns
Special Regional Focus
As part of the Blueprint initiative, Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program will work closely with political, civic, and nonprofit leaders in states and regions to articulate a federal policy agenda that responds to the assets and opportunities facing these two very different regions.
An Economic Plan for the Commonwealth: Unleashing the assets of Metropolitan Pennsylvania
In Pennsylvania, the next major presidential primary state, concerns about the economy loom large. A true federal economic agenda for the Commonwealth must empower state and local innovators to leverage the core assets of the nation's economy--innovation, infrastructure, human capital and quality places--where those assets are located: Pennsylvania’s many small and large metropolitan areas.
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View Pennsylvania's Metropolitan Areas
Profile: The Harrisburg Metropolitan Area
Profile: The Lehigh Valley
Profile: The Lancaster Metropolitan Area
Profile: The Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area
Profile: The Philadelphia Metropolitan Area
Profile: The Scranton-Wilkes-Barre-Hazleton Metropolitan Area
The Great Lakes Economic Initiative
The Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, in partnership with a network of academic, public policy, business and civic organizations, began this multi-year research and policy development initiative in 2005 to improve the economic vitality of the Great Lakes region.
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The Intermountain West: America’s (Mega-) Urban Future
The states in the Intermountain West are experiencing rapid population and job growth as well as an influx of immigrants. This report, to be released in Spring 2008, will examine the new realities facing the Intermountain West in matters of transportation, immigration, affordable housing, and water resources. It will focus on five “megapolitan” or emerging-mega areas in five states: Albuquerque, NM; Denver, CO; Las Vegas, NV; Phoenix, AZ; and Salt Lake City, UT. It will provide a unifying vision for Western leaders, offering a single common frame of reference allowing for the formation of new multi-state collaborations and a more meaningful partnership with the federal government.