Brookings Targets Productivity, Inclusiveness and Sustainability in U.S. Metros

As a group, the country’s metropolitan areas face substantial long-term challenges as large gaps in issues such as productivity growth, environmental sustainability, and social inclusion separate the leaders from the laggards. Earlier this month, the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program released the second of its “core” reports from its Blueprint for American Prosperity initiative to lay out an economic agenda for U.S. metro areas.
 
In MetroPolicy: Shaping a New Federal Partnership for a Metropolitan Nation, Brookings outlines how leaders are driving gains in prosperity in their regions and how other countries are nurturing metro areas. Brookings kicked off its Blueprint initiative last November (see the Nov. 7, 2007 issue of the Digest), exactly one year before the date of the upcoming presidential election.
 
The report synthesizes various policy recommendations, some of which have emerged from other recent briefs included in the Blueprint initiative. A matrix of these recommendations to promote federal government leadership, empower states and localities, or maximize the performance of government are sorted by topics such as innovation, human capital, infrastructure, sustainable and quality places, and regional governance. Some of these recommendations include:

• Establish a cluster-development grant program within certain industries;
• Create a National Innovation Foundation to centralize federal efforts to promote innovation;
• Begin a Smart Transportation Partnership to encourage development adjacent to transit;
• Expand and update the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC);
• Institute Governance Challenge grants to reward regional cooperation; and,
• Provide additional funding to metropolitan planning organizations.

In order to illustrate the variety within metropolitan areas in the U.S., the report ranks the 100 largest metros in terms of employed population by the following measures (values from 2005 unless otherwise noted):

• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per Job;
• Growth of GDP per Job from 2001 to 2005;
• Ratio between 90th and 10th Wage Percentiles;
• Metric Tons of Carbon Emissions per Capita;
• Vehicle Miles Traveled per Capita;
• High School Degree Attainment Rate in 2006; and,
• Bachelors Degree Attainment Rate in 2006.

For example, where the GDP per job was $87,770 for the U.S. as a whole, the Bridgeport (CT) metro area was ranked highest with a GDP per job of $160,400 and the Scranton (PA) metro had the lowest amount with $63,320 per job. Two metros, Baton Rouge (LA) and San Jose (CA), experienced a rise in GDP per job greater than 21.5 percent from 2001 to 2005, where the U.S. as a whole witnessed a 9.4 percent increase in that time period.
 
MetroPolicy: Shaping a New Federal Partnership for a Metropolitan Nation is available at:
http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2008/06_metropolicy.aspx