It's easy to say what you should do, and really hard to make it work

Neal Peirce's latest column calls on cities and suburbs to collaborate. See "Cities and suburbs must collaborate‎" from the Denver Post. But while it might be true that "many high-density suburbs now resemble inner cities in their growth trajectories and commuting patterns" the reality is that for the most part, the level of impoverishment in the center city is still significantly greater than in the suburbs, especially when it is broken down county by county.

In most regions, the city is incredibly impoverished, and suburban residents don't see the financial benefit for addressing it. (This is the whole basis of Orfield's metropolitics argument.)

Plus the political landscape is heterogeneous and it's damn difficult to work together when officials are so different demographically (race, income, class, educational attainment). (I've come to believe in my urban revitalization work that doing commercial district revitalization successfully in heterogenous places is incredibly difficult.)

Christopher had sent me a link to a blog entry "It's the leadership stupid" from Branding for Cities, which mentioned a Financial Times article, "Wanted: a strong mayor with vision to see off rival centres" (registration required). The article starts off with this:

Successful regeneration increasingly depends on creating a unique vision for the future that attracts investment in the face of fierce competition from other cities.

“The first thing a city government needs to do is to decide what they are and what they want to be,” says Ged Drugan, programme director for the executive education centre at Manchester Business School.

“They really need a vision for the future that credibly differentiates the city and makes it stand out, but cities sometimes fall short on that.”

It's funny because I have been thinking about municipality benchmarking a lot the last few days while thinking about the issues that Baltimore County faces in the context of the Baltimore metropolitan area.

I mentioned to someone at work how Montgomery County's Council commissioned a report comparing their locality to Fairfax County, and it was a pretty direct report that found Montgomery County, Maryland wanting in many respects. See "Even Montgomery agrees: Life looks brighter in Fairfax" from the Washington Post.

What I wrote to Christopher in response to the FT article was this:

I don't know if the issue is having a unique vision necessary, as much as having a vision first of all, and second, a vision that is cognizant of the future and able to be robust and resilient in the face of change. (some direct stuff I wrote is edited out)

The county doesn't use the types of financial mechanisms--tax increment financing, special services districts (like business improvement districts or the "urban services districts" that Montgomery County uses to manage places like Bethesda and Silver Spring), etc.--that municipalities need to use in order to invest in and build forward for the future. This makes it almost impossible to provide the infrastructure investments necessary for revitalization.

And that doesn't even get to the transit question. Most people in the region, including public officials, don't prioritize transit, seeing it as a service of last resort for poor people, mostly of color, mostly in the city. They don't see the potential of transit as an economic development tool that can reshape land use and mobility paradigms in positive, "game changing" ways.

When I look at places like Towson, White Marsh, or Owings Mills, and then compare them to Bethesda and Silver Spring (which have some advantages--transit for one, and a special taxing and services district for another, plus more population and more affluence, plus DC these days is better off than Baltimore) I am rueful over the lost opportunity.

The county is satisfied by being "better" than Baltimore City, when they really need to benchmark their success and expectations against the most successful somewhat comparable counties in the greater region (i.e., Montgomery and Fairfax, not just Carroll and Harford--rural, or Howard and Anne Arundel) and nationally.

But most municipalities are very much inward looking. This is especially true of the District of Columbia. Because people don't get out much, they don't develop the habit of looking for good examples of better practice and setting high expectations and standards for success. I don't really understand why the political and social and quality culture is so hermetic. But it is. And it doesn't make for a very resilient and robust region.

As I used to say 7-8 years ago, DC can be satisfied being more successful than places like St. Louis or Baltimore, but the reality is that the city competes with Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, and Montgomery Counties for population and business. In many instances, Washington doesn't measure up.

While I don't think it's necessary to give money (tax incentives) to companies like Lockheed-Martin to relocate to DC. I do think a substantive municipal economic development and public finance strategy and plan is necessary, one focused on building a more balanced and resilient economy. I would aver that such a strategy and plan is not in place, at least in DC.

And in this instance, DC is not exceptional as few municipalities, even with a master plan, really do this to the extent that it needs to be done.