After 18 years focused on metro regions, the Citistates Group in 2005 launched a first-ever-in-America experiment: a newspaper series focused on shared strategic issues across a multi-state region.
The New England Futures Project, co-sponsored with a newly-formed New England Partnership of leading civic organizations, made a series of six major articles, on topics of compelling importance for the region, available to daily newspapers across the six states on a monthly basis between October 2005 and March 2006. Twenty-seven newspapers, across all six states, ran the series.
Here’s the link to the New England Futures web site, hosted by the New England-based Institute for Sustainable Communities, which includes all the articles and outlines a broad array of follow-up activities: www.newenglandfutures.org.
If you wish to download a PDF of the entire series, the link is http://newenglandfutures.org/d/citistatesarticles.pdf
Special new Peirce-Johnson article based on the project — Boston Globe “Op Ed” page — April 20, 2006: A CALL TO ACTION FOR NEW ENGLAND’S GOVERNORS
Series Title: New England: New Century, New Game
Six teams — or one? Is New England fated to be an old, cold, blue corner of a red-hot America, too divided (Red Sox-versus-Yankees territory, north versus south) to compete nationally and globally in a perilous 21st century? Or can it bring its enormous human and intellectual talents to bear, six states working collectively to forge joint strategies and a distinctive New England brand for the times?
Take the offense on energy. The days of easy-come oil and gas are fast-disappearing. Imagine a coordinated New England-wide strategy to push hard on energy conservation, develop bio-fuels, wind farms, build new “green” buildings and retrofit old ones. Add up the initiatives, link them across six states, and New England could assure its security and keep more dollars at home rather than paying Texans or Saudis. And, it could increase air quality, bolster local agriculture with energy crops, and produce a new wave of jobs for both skilled white collar scientists and blue collar workers.
Play a smarter education card. New England, America’s Athens, faces fierce university competition, from Chapel Hill to Bangalore. Tuitions are soaring, attendance is static, public universities undernourished. Why not imagine all New England as one great campus, with a radical new way for students (local or across the world) to tailor their own New England education, in classroom or on-line? And to educate everyone, merge high school and community college efforts to curb dropouts; determine to make knowledge workers of immigrants.
Growth gamble. New England’s losing ground: its population is aging rapidly; its loss of 20-to-34 year olds was twice the U.S. average in the ’90s. Towns fearful of higher property taxes resist families with school-age kids; some demographers see “slow economic suicide.” Sprawl imperils the region’s world-signature countryside; housing costs soar; local government inefficiency inflates costs. Possible solutions: more family-friendly policies, big pushes for affordable housing, protecting open countryside and channeling development toward old working class cities, state-offered carrots and sticks to cut local government costs.
Connect to compete. To compete, New England needs border-to-border broadband — soon. And to score, it needs earliest-possible attention to glaring deficiencies in the regional transportation system — roads, rail, air, water and interconnections. A first agenda: Can the six governors galvanize a coalition to save and rebuild the rail connections for the Northeast corridor and all of New England?
Health — Consumer as captain. New England prizes the economic jewel of its great teaching hospitals and laboratories. But high tech medicine alone isn’t delivering healthy lives: error rates, system waste, numbers of uninsured people are far too high. Rx: consumers armed with information to share health decisions with their doctors; computer-based scorecards showing which health providers provide best results; heightened focus on public health and healthy lifestyles.