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By Neal Peirce
Smart states and cities, in today’s knowledge economy, focus on great urban universities, high finance and high-tech firms that rely heavily on drawing young professionals. But what happens to America’s second-tier cities?
Can Seattle’s global prosperity be shared with Spokane and Bellingham? Will Chicago’s economic vigor hold dividends for Milwaukee or Peoria? New York City’s economy makes it an acknowledged international “command and control” center, but what about Rochester and Buffalo?
Now fresh light has been thrown on America’s urban split. A just-released report from the civic research group MassINC and the Brookings Institution says the prospering Boston region can do a better job of supporting such struggling outer-ring cities as Fall River, Worcester, Springfield and Lawrence.
“Massachusetts,” notes John Schneider of MassINC, “has completed one of the most successful transitions anywhere in the world from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy, but the transformation remains centered on Greater Boston -- and that’s the problem.”
Between 1970 and 2005, Boston and its immediate orbit of 75 towns prospered in every area from financial services to high-tech health care, adding 467,000 jobs, a 51 percent gain. But the so-called “gateway cities,” from Lowell to New Bedford to Pittsfield, saw one factory after another shut down. Collectively, they lost more than 11,000 jobs, some 3 percent of their job base.
Today the Boston area, notwithstanding its big losses in the 2000 collapse of the national tech bubble, has per capita income 75 percent above the gateway communities. For sheer poverty, Holyoke and Springfield are among America’s very worst-off cities.
Is the big disparity good for Boston? No way, says Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution, principal author of the new study. The agglomeration of high-paying knowledge jobs in a relatively small patch of close-in towns has poduced some of the highest housing prices in the nation. As a result, population is declining; there’s danger of a major regional worker shortage.
What’s more, Boston’s disproportionate growth sparked a wave of suburbanization across eastern Massachusetts, increasing traffic congestion and engulfing many of the small towns and open countryside that literally represent New England to the world.
There’s a compellingly obvious answer: bring the gateway cities into the new economy by channeling higher-tech businesses toward them. And use them as a base for expanded, affordable middle-class housing. These cities want to grow. Some, with commuter rail ties, are positioned close enough to Boston to serve as bedrooms for the big city. They have enough housing stock and physical space to add population without sprawling. And they have growing immigrant populations anxious to be part of the American Dream.
It’s an appealing vision, and Massachusetts’ new governor, Deval Patrick, tells me he embraces it wholeheartedly.
But accomplishing it won’t be easy. These cities’ populations -- increasingly immigrants and minorities -- trail seriously in educational levels, often basic language skills. Their schools need improvement. The city governments have often been patronage havens and/or personal preserves of old-line politicos. Standards of government accountability, transparency, efficiency have often lagged, complicating efforts to draw new-era industries.
But there’s a lot an enterprising state government can do to make older cities more competitive, and the MassINC/Brookings report names several strategies.
One’s to provide more generous state aid for the hard-pressed city governments -- a proposal Gov. Patrick advances in his new state budget. Another is to cut back the thicket of state rules and regulations that hamper cities’ decision-making. In return, the state would insist on cost controls and using improved information technology to track cities’ services and encourage high performance accountability systems. Bringing some encrusted political systems and bureaucracies, through the process, closer to 21st century expectations.
The cities would be encouraged to focus on updated infrastructure -- quality water and sewer, for example, and an attractive public environment. And they’d be challenged to overcome the “deal breakers” that so easily frighten off companies looking for fresh locations __ fears of higher costs, fragmented land ownership, thickets of local regulations, or painfully extensive public hearings. And to collaborate -- joining the regional economic coalitions that are now emerging around such regions as Springfield, giving up the historic, stony “go-it-aloneness” of New England municipalities.
The recovery formula places high priority on building up the educational and language skills of residents. And putting a priority on improving community colleges -- some of Massachusetts’ are high quality, others lag national standards.
Last piece of the puzzle: broadband Internet service, critical for large or small businesses to compete in today’s economy. Many of the troubled gateway cities lack service, or face high rates; city governments, says the report, need to struggle for nothing less than universal, low-cost or free super-fast broadband.
Maybe the time’s ripe for state governments nationwide to focus hard on the steps they can take to encourage their bypassed cities. After all, why do we have state governments? And what’s America without a Peoria, Fall River, Spokane that really works?
Comments may be addressed to npeirce@citistates.com
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