I’m back in Seattle (and acting Mayor this weekend; Mayor Nickels is at the state Democratic convention in Spokane, Council President Richard Conlin is on vacation somewhere near the North Pole following caribou tracks, and Council President Pro Tem Sally Clark is in Portland. All that makes me the go-to guy on Saturday and Sunday. Keep your children inside!).
I flew back from Washington, D. C. late last night after participating in the Brookings Institution conference on the future of cities. (You can read my earlier posts about the trip here and here.)
The conference was great. We heard from a host of speakers, reviewed gobs of data, debated the best approaches to solving urban problems, and got a shot of inspiration from Bruce Katz, America’s leading metro guru. (Katz is this professorial cool guy who can rattle off statistics and policy solutions like no one else I’ve met, and never seems to wear a tie. He’s so metro.)
Here’s my biggest take-away from the conference: we need a new, sweeping urban policy agenda in the United States. Why? Because we truly are a metro-driven, metro-fueled nation.
According to Brookings' research, 75% of our gross domestic product is produced in our 100 largest metropolitan areas. These same 100 metro areas hold 65% of our total population; yet occupy only 12% of our landmass. Metro areas, including Seattle, drive our national prosperity. (Mayor Nickels had this opinion essay on the same theme last Thursday in The Seattle Times.)
One key factor I hadn’t really digested before this conference is that we don’t have a national economy; instead, we have approximately 300 city-based economies. If one accepts this premise, then developing a national urban agenda is really important, and the quicker we do so, the better.
In one of his pep talks, Katz reminded us of previous times in our history when we adopted really large-scale, sweeping agendas. To Katz’s list, I’ve added a few of my own: Teddy Roosevelt’s dream for a national park system that became reality; Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal that pulled the nation out of a grinding depression; Harry Truman’s Marshal Plan that restored Europe and G.I. Bill that sent millions of young people to college; Dwight Eisenhower’s interstate highway system that propelled the country’s manufacturing and technological prowess; Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society that focused us on overcoming urban poverty, social injustice, and the decades-long remnants of slavery; John Kennedy’s “man on the moon” endeavor that unlocked our entrepreneurial spirit. Add to this list the remarkable inventions, technological advances, and creativity of our business sector and you can see that when we put our minds together and focus on a common purpose we can truly do amazing things as a country.
So, if we have this solid track record of accomplishment, if we indeed are a metro nation that depends on the continued success of our urban centers, and if we indeed have vexing urban problems that cry out for solutions, let’s pull together and create a new urban policy agenda that will address what needs to happen in order to sustain our cities.
Our country needs an urban policy that is national in scope, but local in application. National in magnitude, but local in specificity and flexibility. National in funding, but local in accomplishment.
This new urban policy agenda—hopefully led by our new President and Congress in January and urban advocates across the country—is urgently needed to address our decaying infrastructure, our failure to educate many of our children adequately, the challenges of the shift to a knowledge-based economy, and environmental sustainability.
Here are two reports from the new urbanists at Brookings:
Core argument: Metro Nation: How U. S. Metropolitan Areas Fuel American Prosperity
Next step solutions: Shaping a New Federal Partnership for a Metropolitan Nation
There are a host of policy papers, including specific recommendations here. (Scroll down to see list of report and policy briefs.)