Thinking very regionally

Stephen Pearlstein, the business columnist for the Washington Post, was shocked at a forum held by the Downtown DC BID in the summer, when most of us in the audience didn't cotton to his point that we needed to think about intra-regional competitiveness in a more nuanced fashion, that it isn't bad for lower wage, lower "importance" jobs to be outplaced from DC into area jurisdictions such as New Carrollton, just as how "back office" finance industry jobs migrated from Manhattan to Brooklyn and Hoboken, New Jersey, keeping the higher paying-knowledge jobs at the center, in the higher rent districts.

The reason I don't fully buy into this for DC proper is that we end up having an unbalanced economy, one that with exogenous shocks to the system, is less resilient and less balanced.

Plus, by not looking into the economics of why rents are 'so high" in DC, we just accept it, and don't do the kind of deeper analysis required to figure out how the local economy is working (or not).

Still, this piece from the Florida Times-Union, "Will all-for-one region truly benefit all? Making six states into a mega-region could help economy, if areas only cooperate," discusses a meta-state regional economic outlook in the Southeastern U.S., and how economically the region ought to plan in a more coordinated and focused fashion, just as Pearlstein suggests for the DC region. (I end up tracking regional development issues there because earlier in the year I finished up a downtown revitalization study in one of the communities mentioned in this article.)

Something I found interesting was the suggestion that the ports of Savannah and Jacksonville focus their activity and complement each other, to best specialize and maximize their operations and profitability, which is taking a regionwide approach to economic development and building the local economy. From the article:

The connection between Athens/Augusta/Savannah/Brunswick and Charlotte, N.C., and Mobile, Ala., may not be immediately obvious, and the idea of local goals being voluntarily sidetracked for the overall benefit of such a huge region is almost unheard of.

But some leaders are calling for local officials to participate in long-range planning on the scale of what they call a six-state "mega-region" and the collaboration it entails. That planning would include prioritizing transportation projects, water usage and economic development.

Academics have long noticed clusters of sprawling cities grow toward each other to form mega-regions. The Piedmont-Atlantic Megaregion, or PAM, that links Mobile, Atlanta and Charlotte and spreading out to include Athens, Augusta and Savannah, was designated by Catherine Ross, director of the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development at Georgia Tech. She'll detail her reasoning in Megaregions: Planning for a Competitive Advantage, to be published in the spring.

By employing plans that capitalize on the strengths of each part of the region - from banking centers in Birmingham, Ala., and Charlotte to the transportation centers in Savannah and Atlanta - the whole region will maximize its economic potential, she argues.

(Ironically, Michael Dresser makes a comment in "Bringing the country up to speed with 21st-century transportation" in today's Baltimore Sun that is relevant too on this, in terms of enhancing the railroad capacity and infrastructure in Baltimore as a way to keep the Port of Baltimore competitive vis-a-vis Wilmington, Delaware.)

While there remains intra-regional competition, at the broader level the states and local governments have to work together. Mobility is a key area and my suggestion for a combined DC-MD-VA (with service to WV, PA, and DE) railroad authority for the region is one. Cleaning up and better leveraging the Chesapeake Bay is another. (See "Way of Life Slipping Away Along Chesapeake's Edge: Residents, Economy Adapt as Bay's Health Devolves" from yesterday's Post.)