Can Cities And Suburbs Learn To Get Along

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/when-cities-and-suburbs-work-together/391979/

Larimer Square
Denver, Colorado
denver.org

Hello Everyone:

Can the suburbs and cities learn to work together?  It sounds strange but two cities are showing that both places can work together. Nancy Cook of The Atlantic recently wrote "When Cities and Suburbs Work Together," which looks at how Denver, Colorado and New York City, New York have found a way for both places to stop competing with each other and learn to focus on achieving economic goals.

The city of Denver was not always a model for economic development.  Following the oil bust in the eighties Tom Clark, the chief executive officer of the Metro Economic Development Corporation remembers, the city auctioning off office space for mere cents per foot.  In their book The Metropolitan Revolution, Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley wrote, And the state budget was in such dire circumstances that the government stopped funding prominent cultural institutions like the Denver Art Museum and Denver Botanic Gardens.

Denver Art Museum North Buildin
Gio Ponti 1971
flickr.com

When you look at contemporary Denver, a city that consistently high on lists of idle places to work and live, it is hard to imagine that it ever experienced extreme financial hardship.  How it the "Mile High City" go from a city on life support to a "vibrant regional economy, connected by robust public transportation, thriving cultural institutions, and shared economic values?"  Denver and the surrounding suburbs decided that working together was a better approach to economic development than going their separate ways. Once all the bony finger wagging died down, the municipalities joined forces in the mid-eighties "to transform the Denver metropolitan area from a resource-based economy that was concentrated on oil to a vibrant, diverse one."  The result of the collaboration has attacked everything from environmental issues to transportation.  According to Ms. Bradley, the director of the Center for Urban Innovation at the Aspen Institute, It's a culture issue.  It's the way they do business there.

Denver Union Station
en.wikipedia.org

Denver's transition began with a regional accord, signed in January 1987, which laid the foundation for the region's shared economic values.  The mayors of Denver and the surrounding municipalities still meet once a month to discuss the economic plans.  While the original agreement remains voluntary, the participants still follow the core concepts.  Mr. Clark said, It's an approach to regionalism that's about creating a culture instead of a legal structure...People want to behave at the highest level of ethics, provided the guy next does, too.

Denver's success demonstrates the importance of cities, suburbs, and rural areas coming together to meet the challenge of economic development.  However, despite the benefits, this type of urban/suburban/rural area collaboration is rare.  More typical are localities competing with each for the next big economic projects-whether through tax breaks, government subsidies, or changes to zoning ordinance.  Jennifer Bradley continues, It really is still so hard for people to look beyond the one big deal in the pipeline.  One case in point, the states of Kansas and Missouri are notorious for the their "economic border wars"-vying  for companies based in the Kansas City area.

Denver in the winter
Charles Johnson
flickr.com

 Like private companies, landing that one big deal has been the obsession of civic officials for decades.  Nancy Cook writes, "Every city, suburb, and town wants to tout a major corporate headquarters or new stadium or plant to employ hundreds of residents."  However, evidence suggests that this train of thought is dated. According to Matthew Chase, the executive director of the National Association of Counties,

People are moving from 'Let's build an industrial park and hope that somebody locates here' to 'What are our true competitive advantages and assets and how do we leverage them?

In the growing global economy, cities, suburbs, and localities are not only from competition from nearby cities or states but also other countries competing with lower wages.  This is why a small number of cities, such as Denver, have seen the positives of regional.  It's best to look at what makes sense to make the economy of the metropolitan region function effectively, said Christopher, vice president of research at the Regional Plan Association, an independent urban research and advocacy group concentrated on the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut Tri-State area.  Mr. Jones continues, If you're not doing that, you're just moving pieces across the table-they could just as easily move back in the direction instead of creating lasting value and productivity.

New York City housing project
stvinc.com

For the above stated reason, regions from Denver to New York City and their attending suburbs as well as rural communities in Iowa, Nebraska, and Kentucky are banding together.  Rather than just offer up the best or highest tax breaks, local governments, planners, private business people, and developers are working on ways to promote their regions as authentic and unique.  From all the brainstorming activity, "they build up the local economy around those attributes."  Can anyone say historic preservation anyone?

In New York, setting aside the urban/suburban/rural competition can take the form of working together to bring more technology companies and engineering firms to the city, which will aide the surrounding areas through job creation.  The word you might be thinking of is agglomeration.  For example, Ms. Cook cites the example of "a county of 100,000 residents in Iowa, it means banding together with neighboring rural areas to bolster local agriculture."  According to Amy Liu, the co-director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program,  People are going to push for regional approaches because the economy is regional...Even if you are a mayor in an urban core, your residents still need to find good-paying jobs wherever they are.  This means commuting from home to an nearby suburban, town, county for work.

Fresh Meadow Queens, New York
queenscrap.blogspot.com

Some of the change in the approach to competitive economic development has been brought about by rosier economic prospects for many cities in the last thirty to forty years.  Cities such as: New York, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. can offer their own infrastructure, amenities, and employment, while the suburban areas are now experiencing their share of traditionally urban problems like poverty and vacancies.  Jennifer Bradley told Nancy Cook, Cities started to back, while the suburbs are a mixed bag...Cities stopped looking like dead weight.

Although cities are not as bad off as they used to be, the collaborative efforts between the suburbs and cities still remains a genuine obstacle to regional economic development.  Ms. Cook points to the tensions in Ferguson, Missouri, "which suffers from poor economic fortunes and racial discrimination, while other areas of St. Louis prosper."  Christopher Jones sums it up succinctly, The city versus the suburbs is a difficult barrier to overcome.