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Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010

City Centered

By Bruce Katz

With our recovery sluggish and our politics in rancorous free fall, the U.S. is on a desperate search to create jobs in the near term and retool the economy for the long haul. As Dorothy found in The Wizard of Oz, the answers surprisingly lie no farther away than home, or more precisely, the top 100 cities and their environs — the major metros — where most Americans live, work and play.

(原文連結)

City Centered Outline

n The U.S. is on a desperate search to create jobs in the near term and retool the economy for the long haul.

→ The solution lies in the top 100 cities and their environs — the major metros — where most Americans live, work and play.

n Metro Powered — features of Metro in United State

→ House almost two-thirds of our population

→ Generate 74% of our gross domestic product (GDP)

→ Disproportionately concentrate the assets that drive economic success:
(1) patents, (2) advanced research and (3) venture capital, (4) college graduates and Ph.D.s, and (5) air, rail and sea hubs.

n This dynamic holds not only for the U.S. but also around the globe.

→ The rise of Brazil, India and China is a direct product of their rapid urbanization and the growth of supersize metro economies like São Paulo, Mumbai and Shanghai.

n We mythologize the benefits of small-town America, but it's the major metros that make the country thrive.

→ Placing too much tax revenues on suburb. Prosperous small towns are most often suburbs of major cities.

→ Pursuing urban policies devoted to subsidized housing and tax incentives to revitalize inner-city neighborhoods rather than creating policies that, for example, support powerful and promising industry clusters.

→ "Cities are places where two plus two equals five."
Ideas collide and flourish. New inventions and processes emerge in research labs and on factory floors. New products and companies follow.

n Worldwide competitors understand that prosperity in this century will come via the distinct assets and attributes of their metro engines.

→ Germany, China and Brazil are investing in wholesale change through advanced research, renewable energy, modern ports, high-speed rail and urban transit in Munich, Shanghai and São Paulo — the metros that drive their economies.

n What American should do?

→ Revenue
Reducing the federal deficit, and the other half, to efforts grow export.

→ Infrastructure
Start investing to help American businesses innovate and have access to a world-class infrastructure.

→ Meet the Challenges
Cities and suburbs need to team up with businesses to devise export initiatives that build on their metro's distinctive position in the market.

Question:

1. What do you think about the global competition in the Metros?

2. Does it against the American Dream, if the government redirects their resource away from suburb resident?