Remaking Federalism to Remake the American Economy

By Bruce Katz – At the most basic level, the U.S. needs more jobs— 12.1 million by one estimate—to recover the jobs lost during the downturn and keep pace with population growth and labor market dynamics. Beyond pure job growth, the U.S. needs better jobs, to grow wages and incomes.

The next President must look beyond Washington and enlist states and metropolitan areas as active co-partners in the restructuring of the national economy.

Remaking the economy, in essence, requires a remaking of federalism so that governments at all levels “collaborate to compete” and work closely with each other and the private and civic sectors to burnish American competitiveness in the new global economic order.

The time for remaking federalism could not be more propitious. With Washington mired in partisan gridlock, the states and metropolitan areas are once again playing their traditional roles as “laboratories of democracy” and centers of economic and policy innovation. more> http://is.gd/ZMUa8b

Transportation Infrastructure: Moving America

By Robert McMahon – Transportation experts view the call for dramatic federal government action in response to the economic crisis as an opportunity to overhaul the U.S. system of highways, bridges, railways, and mass transit. In the past, the United States has revamped its transportation infrastructure to build canals, transcontinental railways, and a federal highway system, in each case helping usher in periods of economic growth.

A serious problem is coordination between different forms of transportation, experts say. Congress aligns transportation funding with specific modes like highways, rail, and mass transit.

The failure to achieve such coordination, note Brookings Institution experts Bruce Katz and Robert Puentes, leaves the United States as “one of the few industrialized countries that fails to link aviation, highways, freight rail, mass transit, and passenger rail networks.” more> http://is.gd/nnel49

Related articles

• Travel and transportation, StrategyGroup
• Where Do All The Presidential Candidates Stand on Transportation? (switchboard.nrdc.org)
• Transportation infrastructure – what is he FOR? Dec. 21, 2011 (lettersfromron.wordpress.com)

God Bless the United City States of America!

Image @Wikipedia

By Bruce Katz – With presidential politics in high gear, the United States appears to be heading for a frustrating year of partisan conflict and policy gridlock. In previous decades, individual states have acted as “laboratories of democracy”. This moment finds U.S. metropolitan areas providing the sort of innovation and leadership sadly missing in Washington, and, in doing so, forming what might be called the “United Metros of America.” Three particular trends are of note.

• First, metros are pursuing strategies that build on their distinctive strengths in the global economy
• Second, metros are looking abroad for new growth possibilities
• Finally, metro innovations are inspiring states to catalyse and reward bottom-up economic growth strategies

The most significant political event of 2012 may not be the presidential election but the emergence of the United Metros of America and the potential for national renewal from the ground up. more> http://is.gd/rIUF5m