Jennifer BradleySenior Research AssociateBuffalo, NYJune 18, 2009

How Recent Federal Policy Supports Metropolitan Collaboration

Overview

Why do metro areas matter to economic recovery and prosperity?

How well does ARRA empower cities and metro areas?

How are metro areas beginning to respond with regional action and creativity?

What are emerging opportunities in the federal budget?

I

II

III

IV

Long-run economic growth depends on investment in the drivers of prosperity

To prosper, the U.S.

must leverage four key

assets

Innovatio

n

Human

Capital

Infrastructu

reQuality

Places

+ Governance

Source: Brookings analysis of U.S Census Bureau, BLS, and, BEA data

Patents

74% 78%

College Graduates

Population

65%

Land Area

12%

U.S. Air Cargo Weight

79%92%

Public Transit Miles

Our country’s 100 largest metro areas hold the bulk of the assets of the U.S. economy

These metro areas collectively generate 75% of U.S. GDP, and will drive our economic recovery

The Great Lakes states are metropolitan states

* In these states, the smaller metro areas, rather than the metros in the top 100 nationally, are what make them “metro states”

** Greater New York City alone counts for 64 percent of the state population and 76 percent of state GDP

Source: Brookings Analysis of Census and BEA Data

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

100%

Kentu

cky*

Illinois

Indiana*Iowa*

Michiga

n

Minnesota

Missouri

New York**

Ohio

Pennsylva

nia

Wisc

onsin*

% Population in metro areas % Metro share of state GDP

Overview

Why do metro areas matter to economic recovery and prosperity?

How well does ARRA empower cities and metro areas?

How are metro areas beginning to respond with regional action and creativity?

What are emerging opportunities in the federal budget?

I

II

III

IV

ARRA was conceived to respond to a crisis—one of the worst economic contractions since the Great Depression

•The nation’s unemployment rate hit 8.1 percent

•GDP was announced to have fallen more than 6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008

•Job losses had exceeded 600,000 for the third consecutive month

As it was signed in February:

From the very beginning, an insistence on swift action characterized the debate

“If we do not act boldly and swiftly, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.”

-President Obama, January 24, 2009

ARRA balances tax cuts, investments, and aid

Source: Center for American Progress

Investments (highways,

transit, health, education, etc.)

23%

Aid for states and localities

18%

Help for those most in need

16%Tax cut stimulus

32%

Green investments

11%

A substantial portion of the stimulus funds must be spent within the next two years

An

nu

al sp

en

din

g,

in b

illio

ns

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

$400

$300

$200

$100

Green investments

Other investments (highways, health, etc.)Aid for states and localities

Help for those most in need

Tax cut stimulus

Source: Center for American Progress

But is speed the correct goal?

While we think that crisis breeds innovation, the speed with which ARRA was enacted had the opposite effect at the federal level

SLOWPROCEED

WITH CAUTION

• Inherent anti-urban bias

• Narrow definition of accountability

• Categorically siloed programs

• Proliferation of recipients

Thus, it’s not surprising that ARRA is disappointing from a metropolitan perspective:

ARRA is business as usual … at warp speed

Especially troublesome will be the typical mix of siloed money flows and rifts between key actors

Department of Transportation

Local Executive

State Department of Transportation

Metropolitan Planning

Organization

Federal Highway Administration

Federal Railroad Administration

Federal Transit Administration

Amtrak

State Rail Program

Transit Authority

Highway Infrastructure

Intercity Rail

Transit Capital

Especially troublesome will be the typical mix of siloed money flows and rifts between key actors

Department of Labor

Local Executive

State Agencies

Local Government

Agencies

Employment and Training Administration

National Non-Profit

Organizations

State Agencies

Local Non-Profit

Organizations

Workforce Investment

Boards

Workforce Investment

Boards?

Adult, Youth, and Dislocated Worker Job Training

Community Service Jobs for Older Americans

Job Training in Renewable Energy and

Emerging Industries

And yet, ARRA also invests substantially in what matters

•Directs hundreds of billions of dollars toward bolstering the economy’s key assets

•Provides impetus for metropolitan collaboration and policy coordination in some areas

About $335 billion out of $787 billion is directed toward the key assets that drive long-run prosperity

Source: Brookings analysis of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

•$50 billion in federal research and development (R&D) funding critical to innovation activities in local universities, labs, health complexes, and research centers

•$125 billion in direct funding for education and human capital cultivation, including billions in funds for incentives to states and $650 million to support innovative approaches in struggling school districts

•$126 billion in spending on transportation, energy grid, water-sewer, and other infrastructure

•$34 billion to support energy retrofits of buildings, community development, inner-city business development, and transit—things that contribute to the creation of sustainable, quality places in metropolitan America

Notable investment categories include:

Other provisions provide an impetus for metropolitan collaboration and policy coordination

•$750 million for connecting worker training to high-growth and emerging industries could spur regional approaches to worker training that may bolster regional industry cluster growth

•$1.5 billion in competitive grants for major transportation projects, which could provide opportunities to link transportation, housing, energy, and environmental programs

•$3.2 billion in Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants could be used for metropolitan strategies to reduce driving and conserve energy in other coordinated ways

•$2 billion in competitive grants for Neighborhood Stabilization that may support consortia of nonprofits serving multi-jurisdictional areas hit hard by housing crisis

Overview

Why do metro areas matter to economic recovery and prosperity?

How well does ARRA empower cities and metro areas?

How are metro areas beginning to respond with regional action and creativity?

What are emerging opportunities in the federal budget?

I

II

III

IV

• Invest in projects or initiatives that reflect regional priorities and realities

• Are multi-jurisdictional or multi-sector at the regional scale

• Adopt integrated, silo-busting approaches

• Embrace multidimensional outcomes (e.g. sustainability and inclusion)

• Embody strong state and metro partnerships

Regionally, creative solutions often:

Characteristics of Regional Innovation in ARRA

Categories of Emerging Metropolitan Collaboration around ARRA

MPO Driven

Independent Collaborations

State Driven

• Working with 12 regions across the state to distribute and maximize the impact of ARRA funds

• Their goal is to “ensure the federal stimulus funds will achieve the highest economic impact”

• Each region is encouraged to create a Regional Economic Recovery Work Plan that supports economic recovery by:

1. Leveraging resources

2. Expediting infrastructure spending

3. Supporting the growth of business and innovation

4. Promoting workforce development

5. Enhancing environmental quality

California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency

State Driven:California

Website: www.bth.ca.gov

The Bay Area Council Economic Institute • Public-private organization charged with developing the 9-

county Bay Area’s economic recovery plan

• Plan summarizes regional strategies and priorities in transportation, water, energy efficiency, workforce training, housing market sustainability, science and innovation, notes which individual jurisdictions or agency proposals best align with the strategy and priorities

• All localities can forward their individual plans to the state – exclusion from the regional plan is not fatal

State Driven:California

Website: www.bayeconfor.org/recovery/index.html

MPO Driven:

• MPO’s prosperity partnership coalition created a clearinghouse of competitive ARRA funding opportunities and regional project ideas

• Also convenes regular meetings of regional stakeholders to share ideas, match potential regional partners, work on most promising regional applications for competitive funds

• Not a regional application system, and does not preclude individual governments from submitting their own grant applications

Puget Sound Regional Council

Seattle Metro

Website: www.psrc.org/recovery.htm

• In absence of state leadership, MARC is articulating regional policy priorities (bi-state, 9 counties, 120 municipalities)

• MARC is currently developing an ARRA implementation strategy at regional level:

The Mid-America Regional Council (MARC)

1. Coordinating local implementation of grants and link up multi-jurisdictionally when possible (weatherization; job training; and neighborhood stabilization)

2. Conceptualizing support for regional projects (public health and health information sharing; regional traffic management system)

3. Aligning regional resources to a targeted neighborhood of high distress yet major assets

MPO Driven:Kansas City Metro

Website: www.marc.org

Independent Collaborations:

Puget Sound New Energy Solutions• Fourteen city and county governments and four regional and

local utilities cooperating in advancing the same regional sustainability framework

• Coordinating investments in energy efficiency, clean mobility, smart grids to get the most out of the stimulus formula allocations and be better positioned to win competitive grant awards

• Specifically, guiding coordination of EECBG applications and competitive ARRA grant proposals

Seattle Metro

City of Choice Initiative

• Establishing shared objectives for stimulus spending, 12 priority areas and resources for reaching the goals

• Vision of using ARRA funds to achieve “game-changing” goals in the priority areas

Independent Collaborations:Memphis City and Shelby County

South Suburban Housing Initiative• Twelve suburban Chicago communities

coordinating NSP round 1 funding, supported by MPO, regional non-profit

• Hired a coordinator for its inter-jurisdictional housing collaborative to align the policies, programs, and resources of participating towns

• Creating, among other things, a unified zoning code overlay to make things easier for interested developers.

• Will use this as a platform for the NSP2 competitive round funding

Independent Collaborations:Southern Cook County Suburbs (Chicago)

Metropolitan Collaboration:

• Voluntary collaboration

• Prospect of competition spurring efforts to collaborate, coordinate

• Collaboration filling capacity gaps, lowering transaction costs

Common Themes

Overview

Why do metro areas matter to economic recovery and prosperity?

How well does ARRA empower cities and metro areas?

How are metro areas beginning to respond with regional action and creativity?

What are emerging opportunities in the federal budget?

I

II

III

IV

Emerging Opportunities:

HUD’s $150 million Sustainable Communities Initiative to “integrate transportation and housing planning decisions in a way that

maximizes choices for residents and businesses, lowers transportation costs and drives more

sustainable development patterns”• MPOs, CDBG teams apply for competitive grants to support

integrated regional development plans – cross-border, cross-policy silos

• Grants for localities to align local zoning and land use rules with larger regional visions

• Funds for research and innovation by HUD and DOT

Sustainability

Department of Energy’s $280 million request to fund eight new Energy Innovation Hubs aimed at supporting “cross-disciplinary research and

development focused on the barriers to transforming energy technologies into commercially deployable materials, devices, and systems,” replicating the

success of the department’s three regionally sited Bioenergy Research Centers.

Department of Labor’s Economic Development Administration’s request for $50 million for a national research and information center on the geography of

regional innovation clusters

Emerging Opportunities:Innovation

Community Regeneration, Sustainability and Innovation Act, 2009 (Introduced)

• Regional land banks

• Regional land use plans

• Networks of green infrastructure

Would support multi-jurisdictional or regional approaches to addressing vacant and abandoned property through:

Emerging Opportunities:Land Use

For More Information

Jennifer Bradleyjbradley@brookings.edu

Senior Research AssociateBrookings Metropolitan Policy

Program

Metro Potential in ARRA: An Early Assessment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Metro Program’s Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Analysis and Other Related Commentary