You can call them “metros.” We’ve been calling them “citistates” for a long time– and we stick by the definition we created some years ago:
Citi•state — n. — A region consisting of one or more historic central cities surrounded by cities and towns which have a shared identification, function as a single zone for trade, commerce and communication, and are characterized by social, economic and environmental interdependence.
What’s heartening is to see the crescendo of increased interest and attention to these organic, functioning, critical regions of the new global economy. The “feel” is 20 to 30 times more interest than 20 years ago. Latest evidence: the major attention and commitment to the metro issue of interest on the part of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, headed by Bruce Katz. Under the banner of its new “Blueprint for American Prosperity” initiative, Katz and his crew are presently holding meetings across the country to encourage regions to think more cohesively, more strategically about their own issues and how they believe the federal government could be a stronger partner.
Here’s a link to my November 11 column on the Brookings initiative.
Afficionados of regionalism will note that the pyramid “flip” idea featured in the column harkens back to the “reverse RFP” idea of a few years ago. As Keith Laughlin of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy e-mails:
“When I was the director of the White House Task Force on Livable Communities [during the Clinton administration] we put together an initiative with major national foundations called the Partnership for Regional Livability (PRL), otherwise known as “pearl.” At the heart of the effort was the concept of the “reverse RFP.” The regions would issue a “Request for Partnership” to the federal government outlining its objectives and the responsibility of the feds was to align its resources to meet the needs of the region. This is what Al Gore, in the context of reinventing government, used to refer to as the federal government’s “virtual department of Cleveland.” The foundations, in turn, would use their grant making to catalyze cooperation across jurisdictional boundaries at the regional level. We held a Wingspread conference on the topic with the foundations and political appointees at the assistant secretary level across a variety of agencies to get into the nitty gritty of what statutory changes might be needed to permit greater cooperation. We were trying to set the stage for the next stage of reinvention based on both regionalism and livability in a Gore Administration. But it was not to be.”
But Mary Walshock, San Diego regional leader, reminds me the Bush administration has launched one significant regional initiative– the WIRED program of the U.S. Department of Labor. The idea is to provide incentives for often-disjoined workforce development and economic development groups to get together on creative new regional collaboratives. So far 39 regions have responded by forming their own partnerships and winning grants during three waves of competitive grant making. The total funding is modest, but the program certainly qualifies as a pioneering “reverse RFP.”