Build economic growth through urban centers

PBN Staff

09/24/2011

While there’s much animated, public discourse about limiting or shrinking the role of the federal government in a high- debt environment, it’s clear that states – themselves struggling with shrinkage and limits – need to be cognizant of federal policies and programs to leverage the limited resources and focus that do exist.
More than ever, these regions also need to see themselves as part of larger, multistate regional economies so as to access and share resources for common benefit with nearby states that may have assets not found locally.
So here’s a synopsis of the administration’s initiatives designed to drive economic growth through entrepreneurship and innovation through sectors and regions.
Metro Matters
According to Brookings’ Metro Policy Program, metro areas contain “83 percent of the U.S. population, 85 percent of the nation’s jobs and 92 percent of all college graduates. They are our hubs of research and innovation, our centers of human capital, and our gateways of trade and immigration. They are the drivers of our economy, and American competitiveness depends on their vitality.”
Programs like that of Brookings live to see their research conclusions taken up by whatever target audience they seek to influence – in the case of the program, it’s federal and state government. U.S. Small Business Administration Administrator Karen Mills’ work in regional innovation clusters was catalyzed by a Brookings Institute piece she co-authored in 2006 on the subject. So Mills is no doubt a champion for Brookings’ ideas inside the White House.
The administration has several programs and initiatives that – while not explicitly metro targeted – will find their greatest take-up in urban centers. Startup America – a public-private initiative launched by AOL founder Steve Case, Kauffman Foundation and the SBA – announced in January a platform to drive attention and resources to high-growth startups that account for the majority of jobs in the U.S. Included in this initiative is a new SBA venture capital matching pool – part of the fiscal 2012 budget – to create $200 million per year in funds to support the so-called gazelles of innovation and entrepreneurship. As the historical trend shows, the vast majority of funds deployed from a program like this will land in urban centers.
In addition to the innovation and job-growth side of the equation, the administration has created an office of Urban Affairs to attend to less well-served communities. Program initiatives that speak to urban challenges include initiatives for affordable housing, work force, education, and job initiatives (e.g. weatherization for energy efficiency) that speak to urban challenges. First Lady Michelle Obama’s Healthy Foods Initiative, inspired by her own mission around obesity and healthy choices, has an urban angle. The initiative describes “food deserts” – the paucity of accessible and affordable, healthy foods available in inner cities to low- and moderate-income residents.
The take-home message – build Rhode Island’s innovation and entrepreneurship policy around driving resource to urban centers and look to urban-policy programs that can help address the more challenged, underserved parts of urban Providence and Warwick.
Whether you support this administration or are looking for a change in 2012, it only serves Providence and Warwick to take advantage of small business, innovation, work force development and educational programs that can drive economic growth and job creation.
Think Mega
Given the limits of federal resources and the challenges (and so limits) of state government resources, it’s not enough to focus only on what’s good for Providence or more broadly for Rhode Island. States need to collaborate more to share common resources for shared benefit. This is particularly true for small states like Rhode Island that are proximate to innovation-asset rich cities such as Boston. Providence has long and purposefully leveraged its proximity to Boston. It has also understood its cultural and geographical proximity to Fall River, Mass., which is considered part of the greater Providence metro region.
Given the depth and length of our current economic malaise, it will not be enough to think narrowly in terms of cross-border collaboration. A broader regionalism – linking both urban and rural centers across borders – is needed to create an asset base that will enable super-regions – e.g. New England as a single economic entity – to leverage collective strengths while fortifying weaknesses.
According to America 2050 “As metropolitan regions continued to expand throughout the second half of the 20th century their boundaries began to blur, creating a new scale of geography now known as the megaregion. Interlocking economic systems, shared natural resources and ecosystems, and common transportation systems link these population centers together. As continued population growth and low-density settlement patterns place increasing pressure on these systems, there is greater impetus to coordinate policy at this expanded scale.”
With the debt and deficit environment as a constraint, these kinds of initiatives are both strategic and necessary. States need to collaborate and ally with what federal resources remain after the thinning we’re likely to see in coming years. •

Michael Gurau is president of Clear Innovation Partners, a Maine-based, cluster-development organization. He can be reached at
mgurau@clearinnovationpartners.com.

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