America’s metropolitan areas are increasingly the drivers of our national economy. As a nation, however, our vision, plans, and priorities fail to reflect that reality: efforts to support urban growth are piecemeal, and large-scale policy-making and planning are virtually nonexistent. Infrastructure reflects the way things were, rather than the new dynamics of an evolving economy.
A new approach to supporting urban revitalization is in development under the aegis of The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program. Created in 1996, the Metropolitan Policy Program provides decision-makers with cutting-edge research and policy ideas for improving the health and prosperity of cities and metropolitan areas. Next Street’s founding partners, Tim Ferguson and Ron Walker, sit on the Program’s Leadership Council.
The Blueprint for American Prosperity is a broad-based effort of the Metropolitan Policy Program to advance public policies central to U.S. competitiveness. It provides independent and powerful ideas to shape the 2008 election-season debate and the work of the next Administration, with a special focus on urban revitalization.
Our guest editor, Bruce Katz, is Brookings vice president and founding director of the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, and is leading development of the Blueprint, which is scheduled for release in November.
Tim Ferguson
Unleashing the potential of metropolitan Americaby Bruce Katz, The Brookings Institution
With a little more than a year to go before the 2008 election, the presidential campaign has disappointedly conformed to convention: candidates down on the farm, adopting “aw, shucks” personas, or out at the fair eating deep fried anything and everything on a stick.
Though the farm as hustings was and remains a central trope of our political theater, it hasn’t reflected the American reality in decades.
America does not live on the farm anymore and hasn’t for a long time.
Far from it: The vast majority of Americans today live, work, play and shop in cities, suburbs, and exurbs, unconstrained by political boundaries.
