Brookings: Experts - Robert E. Lang

Metropolitan Las Vegas: Challenges, Opportunities, and a Vision

Robert E. Lang and Mark Muro — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400

The Brookings Mountain West Initiative, a partnership between UNLV and the Brookings Institution, brings Brookings’ high-quality, independent research to the issues facing the dynamic and fast-growing Intermountain West region. The new initiative builds upon the work of Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program, which focuses on helping metropolitan areas grow in robust, inclusive, and sustainable ways.

In this speech at the Las Vegas roll-out of the project, Mark Muro and nonresident senior fellow Robert Lang argue that Las Vegas presents an exaggerated version of America’s economic quandary. Muro declares that Las Vegas presents in extreme form some of the fundamental questions facing the whole country as it faces a major economic “reset” while Lang contends it can still emerge as America’s next true world city.

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Publication: University of Nevada Las Vegas

Pikes Peak as “Megapolitan” Space: A Federal Agenda for Prosperity in the Colorado Springs Metro Area

Robert E. Lang, Amy Liu and Mark Muro — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Each year Colorado College holds the State of the Rockies Symposium to release an impressive report card grading the Intermountain West region on a variety of attributes. This year the event focused on megapolitan areas—combinations of two or more regions into a single economic, social, and urban system. Headlining the event was the Brookings Blueprint for American Prosperity paper, “Mountain Megas: America’s Newest Metropolitan Places and Federal Partnership to Help them Prosper.” Amy Liu and Mark Muro of the Metro Program, and Robert Lang of Virginia Tech delivered keynote addresses on how Colorado’s Pike’s Peak region relates to the Front Range “mega”.

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Publication: Colorado College State of the Rockies Symposium

What Happens in Vegas … Stimulates the Economy

Robert E. Lang and Mark Muro — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Washington — You know times have gotten really bad when a convention trip to Las Vegas becomes an object of scorn.

President Barack Obama might not have intended to knock Las Vegas by admonishing Wall Streeters recently that “you can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime,” but Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman sure took it that way when he branded the comment “outrageous.”

Why the sensitivity to what in the past might have seemed a pretty bland observation? The main reason is a simple one: According to Steve Friess, who writes for The New York Times, some 30,000 hotel room nights booked for conferences have been canceled in the past month at an estimated loss of $20 million to Las Vegas.

But there is also at work here the play of cultural signifiers and subtexts. In our new age of austerity, Sin City “appears” to be too fun and superficial a place for businesses to gather.

And yet we find this is a serious misreading of the essential role that Las Vegas plays as the leading venue for face-to-face business exchanges in the United States, given our research for a recent major report on the major Intermountain West megalopolises called “Mountain Megas.”

Part of the city’s problem may be its recent reimaging, as epitomized by its now-famous slogan, “What happens here, stays here.” The inward-turning line comes from a Las Vegas ad campaign signaling that the city was returning to its roots by emphasizing sin after having tried to lure families.

But Las Vegas’ most recent Rat Pack-inspired image as an inward-focused party town masks the major outward effect Las Vegas has on the U.S. and world economies.

Las Vegas, best known for its gambling and entertainment, has also emerged as a deal-making center of world importance. Because Las Vegas is such a “fun” place and has a large tourist capacity in terms of hotel rooms and meeting space, it attracts the nation’s largest trade shows.

These shows form ad hoc market exchanges that gather whole industries to a common space to make deals. The irony is that what happens in Las Vegas arguably reaches well beyond the city in terms of business activity. The city’s reputation for discretion in personal matters has enhanced its attractiveness as a public space.

As a place for business networking, Las Vegas is, in this sense, a leading world city of great importance to the American economy. The city has not reached this status by traditional means, and conventional data measuring economic activity do not easily capture its form of exchange.

In a world where face-to-face interaction still matters — and may be even more important than ever — Las Vegas offers world-class venues for people to meet and do business. To get a sense of this, consider the variety and size of some of the trade shows that have recently convened in Las Vegas, including the National Association of Broadcasters (110,000 attendees), the World of Concrete Exposition (85,000 attendees), and International Consumer Electronics Show (150,000 attendees).

Some organizations now have annual meetings that have grown so large that Las Vegas is the only venue big enough to hold their major annual trade shows. A good example is CTIA — The Wireless Association. This Washington, D.C.-based trade group could hold its largest exhibition in Orange County, Calif., as recently as 2007.

But as the cell phone industry took off, attendance shot up and future annual conventions are now scheduled for Las Vegas. Although to outsiders a trade show can seem trivial for a rapidly evolving technology such as wireless, these are make-or-break events for many start-up firms. Their ability to have access to the entire industry — if just for several days a year — can provide the basis for key contacts that lead to everything from patent licensing to venture capital deals.

Ironically, wireless is one of the most space liberating technologies ever devised. Give many high-end white collar workers a 3G iPhone or BlackBerry and they can pretty much do their entire job from anywhere in the world. But in the end, business is all about trust, and that still requires face-to-face encounters.

Las Vegas now plays the highly critical role of gathering all the firms in key industries in one place where they can exchange ideas in person. The fact that Las Vegas is especially fun and frivolous — an adult Disneyland — creates even more incentive for people to attend its conferences, which is how it became the nation’s preeminent convention destination in the first place.

To all the killjoys who now want to shame people out of a Las Vegas convention visit, we say that a major stimulus for the country remains the social lubricant that Sin City provides business contacts.

As for the moral of the story, yes, there is one. Sure, we need a new era of responsibility, but we shouldn’t push austerity so hard that it is ultimately self-defeating. Sometimes junkets are junkets, but sometimes they are assemblies that make the world go ’round and provide the truest form of economic stimulus.

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Publication: The Las Vegas Sun

The Sun Corridor as Mountain Mega: One of America's Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help It Prosper

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:00:00 -0500

Event Information

November 21, 2008
8:00 AM - 11:30 AM EST

Phoenix Urban Research Laboratory
Arizona State University
234 North Central Ave., 8th Floor
Phoenix, AZ

With a major change of management underway in Washington, now is a good time for the “megapolitan” areas of the Intermountain West to better organize their energies and consider how to amplify their voice in national affairs as federal policy responses are renegotiated.

At a forum in Phoenix, Arizona, Fellow and Policy Director Mark Muro and Nonresident Senior Fellow Rob Lang reviewed the recent Brookings report “Mountain Megas." This forum encouraged a free-wheeling discussion of ways megapolitan leaders in the West can reorient the federal-state-mega partnership in order to address common challenges and shared opportunities.

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and ASU President Michael M. Crow spoke, along with other outstanding state and local megapolitan leaders.

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Rob Melnick

Director, Morrison Institute for Public Policy
Executive Director and COO, Global Institute of Sustainability Arizona State University

Michael M. Crow

President, Arizona State University

Grady Gammage, Jr.

Senior Research Fellow, Morrison Institute for Public Policy

Scott Smith

Mayor, City of Mesa

William Harris

President/CEO, Science Foundation Arizona

Robert King

President/CEO, Arizona Community Foundation

Luther Propst

Director, Sonoran Institute

Shannon Scutari

Policy Advisor for Growth and Infrastructure, Governor’s Office, State of Arizona

Phil Gordon

Mayor, City of Phoenix

Janet Napolitano

Governor, State of Arizona

Arizona Needs to get in the Federal Game

Robert E. Lang and Mark Muro — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:00:00 -0500

For several years, we and others at Arizona State University have been describing the rise of the Sun Corridor - the vast swath of urban space that sweeps from Prescott through Phoenix and Pinal County and down through Tucson to Nogales.

Now, it's time to take the next step.

With a new president and Congress set to take office, it's time for Sun Corridor leaders to talk federal policy. In short, it's time to get in the game.

Which is why the Brookings Institution and Morrison Institute of Public Policy are bringing together some of the state's top leaders Friday at ASU's downtown Phoenix campus to consider how to amplify the Sun Corridor's voice in national affairs.

Grounding the discussion will be a review of the big report we released last summer "Mountain Megas," which notes that each of the five southern intermountain states is dominated by a megalopolis - Arizona's Sun Corridor, the Front Range along Colorado's Interstate 25, Wasatch Front along Utah's Interstate 15, Greater Las Vegas and northern New Mexico.

Our work confirms that for all of its dynamism, the Sun Corridor is grappling with huge infrastructure, economic-development, education and sustainability challenges.

These challenges involve the very fundamentals of metro- and megapolitan health, as we at Brookings argue in our national Blueprint for American Prosperity initiative of which "Mountain Megas" is a part. Moreover, the sheer scale of the challenges in many cases transcends local and state problem-solving capacity and will require federal engagement, whether to help fill intercity rail gaps, maintain basic science research, repair the nation's broken immigration system or develop a framework for climate-change responses.

And yet the Sun Corridor is by no means alone or without options. Even if securing the right kind of federal engagement remains a tall order, our work shows that each state in the intermountain "flyover zone" is now anchored by a major "megapolitan" area like the Sun Corridor that is contending with similar plus-sized urban challenges.

What's more, the Southwestern states' prominence in the recent election boosted their clout, as has the deep involvement in national politics of strong leaders like Gov. Janet Napolitano, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

In short, neither the Sun Corridor nor Arizona need to "go it alone" as they seek the limited but substantive federal engagements to craft the future.

Hence the question of the moment: Shouldn't the five Mountain Megas - and their states - seek common cause as they insist on a new, more productive arrangement with Washington?

Sun Corridor leaders have only to note the extraordinary push of Midwestern lawmakers to secure a $25 billion federal bailout of the auto industry to recognize that multistate teamwork is crucial in federal relations.

In sum, Sun Corridor leaders should consider whether they can afford to watch the massive change of governance going on in Washington without forging ties with their colleagues in the other Mountain Megas to place a full mega-oriented team on the field.

We would suggest they dare not.

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Publication: The Arizona Republic

Megapolitan Las Vegas: One of America’s Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help It Prosper

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:00:00 -0400

Event Information

October 28, 2008
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT

UNLV Foundation Building, Blasco Event Wing
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Las Vegas, NV

The Metro Program’s ongoing Intermountain West initiative gained new momentum with a major event in Las Vegas at which Fellow and Policy Director Mark Muro and Nonresident Senior Fellow Rob Lang reviewed the recent Brookings report “Mountain Megas" to inform a free-wheeling discussion of ways “megapolitan” leaders in the West can reorient the federal-state-mega partnership in order to address common challenges and shared opportunities.

The October 24 forum, co-sponsored by the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, brought together 150 Las Vegas-area government and business leaders—what the Las Vegas Sun referred to as a “who’s who of Southern Nevada.” Included among the participants were Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, UNLV President David Ashley, Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid, and Brookings Trustee and Sun Editor Brian Greenspun.

Although Sen. Reid stopped short of endorsing calls for the creation of an Intermountain West congressional caucus, he encouraged new inter-state contacts among leaders of the five southern Rockies states and their megapolitan areas to amplify the region’s voice on critical issues pending in Congress, ranging from infrastructure to energy, water, and climate change. Participants eagerly embraced such work. Greenspun; Harrah’s Entertainment’s Thom Reilly; Jacob Snow of the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada; and Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority all expressed keen interest in expanding five-state contacts to seek common cause, particularly on transportation and infrastructure. For his part, UNLV’s Ashley proposed hosting a five-state leadership meeting in spring 2009 to advance multi-state collaboration.

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In the News »

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Thom Reilly

Harrah’s Foundation

David B. Ashley

President, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Brian Greenspun

President, The Greenspun Corporation
Editor and Publisher, The Las Vegas Sun

Rory Reid

Chairman, Clark County (NV) Commission

Jacob Snow

General Manager, Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada

Michael W. Yackira

President and CEO, NV Energy

Neal Smatresk

Executive Vice President and Provost
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Pat Mulroy

General Manager, Southern Nevada Water Authority

Harry Reid

Majority Leader, U.S. Senate
U.S. Senator, State of Nevada

Demographic Keys to the 2008 Election

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

October 20, 2008
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

This November could bring to fruition many demographic trends that are decisively reshaping the political landscape of the United States. A new book from Brookings Press, Red, Blue and Purple America: The Future of Election Demographics (2008), edited by Brookings Visiting Fellow Ruy Teixeira, puts these trends in context.

On October 20, Brookings hosted a discussion on these key trends and their impact on the 2008 election. Teixeira analyzed the white working class and the 2008 election. He also moderated the session among book contributors and commentators which included Brookings Senior Fellow William Frey, who discussed race and immigration in the 2008 election; Brookings Senior Fellow William Galston, who discussed religion and the 2008 election; Scott Keeter of the Pew Research Center, who discussed young voters and the 2008 election; and Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Robert Lang, who discussed suburbia and the 2008 election. Karlyn Bowman, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, provided overall commentary.

After the program, the panel took audience questions.

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Karlyn Bowman

Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Scott Keeter

Director of Survey Research, Pew Research Center

Western Perspective: Mountain Megas

Robert E. Lang and Mark Muro — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:00:00 -0400

The Intermountain West—once the Great Empty—is where it's at this fall. The states, especially in the region's southern half —Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah—suddenly lie smack in the middle of the nation's most radical and consequential demographic, land-use and economic transformations. The region is growing up, flexing its muscles and distancing itself from California, which has historically had an outsized impact on the West's development.

In fact, thanks to such maturation, the southern Intermountain West is well on its way to emerging as what might be called the New American Heartland as its economy, people and politics become more central to the nation.

Politically, the region—blessed already by nationally significant senators and governors—could be home to several swing states in the 2008 election and in time play the storied "kingmaking” role the Midwest does now.

Policywise, the Mountain region's signature issues are more and more the nation's, whether it be road and rail infrastructure, job quality, immigration or energy. And for that matter, the southern Intermountain West is also on the cutting edge of pioneering the astonishing new urban forms that are evolving all across America and even abroad.

Most notably, the region is home to five emerging "megapolitan” areas—vast, newly recognized "super regions” that often combine two or more metropolitan areas into a single huge economic, social and urban system.

In the 1960s, Dallas and Fort Worth were clearly colliding, as were Washington, D.C. and Baltimore by the 1980s. Now regions with more far-flung urban cores such as Phoenix and Tucson are exhibiting the same pattern, as are the urban spaces extending around Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and Albuquerque. In short, a region that was once a peripheral rural "flyover” zone and "empty quarter” has moved in a very real sense to the center of American urban invention.

Which is why our group at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program in Washington, D.C.—one of the nation's leading urban research organizations—undertook two years ago to probe the nature of the Intermountain region's new urban reality and assess, in a presidential election year, its federal policy needs.

Going in we thought (and still do) that on balance the campaigners, power brokers, congressmen, commentators, think tankers and feature writers of the nation's Capitol have failed to understand the Rocky Mountain West's dynamic new urban reality.

What is more, we felt that even within the region there was a need for greater awareness of the new reality and an added sense of common cause among the different states' leaders to ensure the region asserts its common interests cohesively in Washington.

And so in July, just in time for the major political parties' August conventions, we published a major report on the southern intermountain region entitled "Mountain Megas: America 's Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper.”

Prepared as part of our metro-oriented Blueprint for American Prosperity initiative, "Mountain Megas” describes and assesses the new super-sized reality of the Intermountain West and proposes a multi-dimensional policy agenda for securing a more helpful partnership with Washington to empower regional leaders' efforts to build a brand of Western prosperity that is at once more sustainable, productive and inclusive than past paroxysms of boom and bust.

Along these lines, we assumed that true prosperity is actually based on achieving those three interrelated dimensions of prosperity—sustainable, productive and inclusive growth—all at once. In addition, we assumed that such balanced growth depends on the region assembling in its megapolitan areas sufficient stocks of the crucial assets that contribute to such prosperity: top-notch infrastructure, world-class innovation inputs, vital human capital, strong quality-of-place, as well as the effective regional governance to put it all together.

And so with that in mind, we probed and sorted the region's crucial economic, demographic and developmental trends and challenges as they currently engulf the southern Rockies' five "megapolitan areas:

The Sun Corridor that incorporates Prescott, Phoenix and Tucson in Arizona;
The Front Range area that links up metropolitan Fort Collins, Boulder, Denver and Colorado Springs along I-25 in Colorado;
The Wasatch Front along Utah 's I-15 corridor linking up metro Logan, Ogden, Provo and Salt Lake City;
Greater Las Vegas; and
Northern New Mexico, where metro Albuquerque and Santa Fe are converging.

For the analysis, we used a new large-scale geographical unit—the "megapolitan" area, developed by Virginia Tech—and with it we took stock of the region with reference to the new super-metro scale across which development is now spilling.

What did we find?

We found a region in the midst of massive, convulsive change and sorely in need of a new relationship with Washington to help it surmount its challenges and assert its leadership in the nation and the world.

In our account, super-fast, hyper-urban population growth is creating gargantuan infrastructure, economic development, education and placemaking challenges, not to mention a crying need for new governance solutions capable of mastering mega-scaled problems:

Careening development across vast expanses of territory has left the region struggling with titanic infrastructure challenges.

A critical interstate linkage is missing between Phoenix and Las Vegas. Intercity passenger rail remains underdeveloped throughout the region. And transportation choices(such as parallel highways, commuter rail and transit options) are still uncommon in the New American Heartland.
Likewise, the region's air network is second-tier, and serves mainly to support regional flights and few direct, international connections. In addition, the threat of global climate change raises vexing questions about water and energy systems and grids.

Economic transformation continues but innovation and productivity rates in the region remain mediocre as the region shifts away from "traditional" resource-based employment and into service industries (hospitality, business and professional work) and high-tech enterprises (aerospace, biotech, IT). Progress aside, the region still possesses a somewhat underperforming portfolio of industry clusters in critical "traded” sectors. And despite undeniable strong points the Mountain West research complex remains spotty as indicated by measures of research and development expenditures, the translation of inventions to job-creation and the presence of highly educated workers.

Large-scale domestic and international migration has brought massive social and educational challenges. Rapid legal and illegal immigration in the context of the nation's unsettled, unworkable immigration policies has generated uncertainty and controversy among employers and communities alike, and is creating dislocations for firms and strains for local governments.

At the same time, this new reality finds the training and education needs of an increasingly diverse population largely unmet. Huge needs exist for more and better English language classes, new ideas for educating the children of new Americans, and new strategies for securing the educational pipeline from pre-K through high school and beyond.
Similarly, widening income disparities and growing poverty rates give rise to concerns that the Mountain West—once a middle-class society—is developing into a society of haves and have-nots.

And then, 50 years of mass-produced, auto-centric development have bequeathed to the region a largely monotonous, inefficient urban fabric that must be overhauled for an era of high gas prices and evolving tastes. In this sense, placemaking and the design of truly distinctive, well-designed urban places stands as a key challenge all across the megapolitan West. To truly flourish, the region must find new ways to carve vibrant, transit-linked urban centers out of the autoscape.

And we noted one other challenge: The Intermountain megas are facing a plus-sized governance riddle. In this regard, while megapolitan-area leaders are innovating, the fact remains that they are frequently hobbled because they lack the super-scaled governance networks or institutions needed to manage events at the super-regional scale on which problems manifest themselves.

In short, as the problems get bigger and sprawl across more metros and counties and municipalities, the governance challenges of response get bigger, too.

As to what we think needs to happen now, it's this: Acting together, as an ascendant and increasingly consequential coalition, the Mountain Megas—and the states that contain them—must insist upon the shaping of a new and more supportive and empowering relationship with the federal government in Washington that will allow the region's pivotal urban regions to surmount their common challenges and assert their leadership in the nation and the world.

To be sure, self-help will always remain the primary source of progress in the Intermountain West. After all, America's most vibrant new urban region has long relied on its do-it-yourself spirit to begin the work of building a "civilization to match the scenery," to paraphrase Utah-born writer Wallace Stegner.

Moreover, the Mountain West's megapolitan areas have made impressive progress lately in beginning to address the super-sized challenges that stand between them and true prosperity.

On infrastructure, they have thrown themselves into building the nation's most impressive new light rail systems, whether in metro Denver, Phoenix or Salt Lake City.
On innovation, they have collaborated across local and metro lines to make serious investments in the region's scientific, engineering, alternative energy and medical capabilities, as exhibited most dramatically by the three-metro Science Foundation Arizona initiative.
And on placemaking and governance, leaders of the megapolitan West have led the nation by immersing themselves in regional visioning processes like Envision Utah or experimenting with new regional governance networks such as the Metro Mayor's Caucus in greater Denver.

And yet, the fact remains that while the West's megapolitan leaders and institutions can achieve a lot by themselves, they can't "go it alone" given the sheer size and boundary-crossing nature of the challenges they face.

Instead, at least at times, and on certain crucial, mega-scaled issues, Western leaders require a steady, supportive partner in the federal government to offer leadership on uniquely federal, border-transcending issues like inter-mega transportation, basic science research, immigration and climate change responses even as they also need greater empowerment and freedom.

Our report calls out a substantial list of policy changes needed for a revitalized Mountain West /Washington partnership.

But to pull out a few errands, Washington needs to at once lead on key infrastructure, innovation and sustainability issues even as it "gets out of the way” on others and moves to empower these increasingly capable, innovative urban areas.

On infrastructure, Washington needs to help state and local governments and the private sector build out their underdeveloped transportation network in a next-generation fashion.

That means strengthening nationally significant passenger and freight corridors in the region, making a long-term commitment to high-speed rail connections, and moving to address the region's long-term air needs. At the same time, Washington needs to quit favoring particular transportation solutions and become what we call "modally agnostic” even as it provides substantially more autonomy to metros and megas to shape their transport networks.
On innovation, Congress should fully fund the America Competes Act to bolster U.S. science research (which would have disproportionate benefits for the Intermountain West) and extend the life of recently passed renewable energy tax credits to reduce the uncertainty around alternative energy investments. But new initiatives are also needed.

The establishment of a national innovation policy with an explicit charge to help foster diverse, locally led regional industry clusters would be a good start. So too would a major national push to develop a high-powered, interlinked network of "discovery innovation institutes” tied to the region's universities to pursue new methods of accelerating the commercialization of pathbreaking new alternative energy breakthroughs.
And on sustainability issues, no region stands better poised to remake its economy and built environment on a more supportable footing. Therefore, it is of special urgency to the Intermountain West that Washington provide the basic framework for change:
Better data and models for monitoring and predicting climate, water, and energy trends;
and a national carbon pricing system—in the form of a tax or "cap-and-trade" program—that would further catalyze markets for the alternative energy innovations that the region is poised to deliver.

To help remake the built environment, moreover, the federal government should issue a "sustainability challenge" to catalyze bold Western problem-solving among state, mega-regional, metropolitan, local and tribal actors.

This challenge, delivered in the form of a competitive grant offer, would challenge all regions to figure out the boldest, most creative and effective new ways to better link up disparate housing, transportation, environmental, energy and land-use policies to achieve broad sustainability goals, such as the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.

The grant would be performance-based, and substantially reward the most ingenious and creative solutions to core sustainability challenges with a substantial financial carrot and flexibility in implementing federal program requirements.

In that way, Washington would appropriately reward Mountain State innovation without pre-judging the possible solutions or micromanaging the details.

And the same approach might work as a way of supporting the emergence of new, wider-reaching and more interconnected governance networks to match the geographic scale and dynamism of the new reality.

One idea: Washington could announce a "governance challenge" to prompt megapolitan-area leaders' to experiment with new ways of organizing themselves. Once again, the challenge would mandate no particular approach but instead simply reward the most path-breaking proposals available for connecting regional and super-regional governance in such key domains as transportation planning or land use or housing with substantial grant money.

In sum, the time has come to make America's emerging New Heartland in the West a prime test-bed for the nation's next generation of pragmatic, far-sighted metropolitan policies. With the Intermountain States increasingly central to national affairs, Washington should look West and seek to craft with Mountain Mega leaders a supportive new partnership that matches the size and promise of the nation's newest urban areas.

Authors

Publication: Headwaters News

Mountain Megas: America's Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper

Robert E. Lang, Mark Muro and Andrea Sarzynski — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Rapid change is enveloping the American West.

States in the southern Intermountain West—Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah—are experiencing some of the fastest population growth and economic and demographic transition anywhere in the country.

In fact, thanks to such maturation, the southern Intermountain West is well on its way to earning itself the title of the New American Heartland as its economy, people, and politics become more central to the nation. Politically, the Intermountain West could be home to several swing states in the 2008 election and in time play the storied “kingmaking” role the Midwest does now.

Prepared as part of the Brookings Institution’s Blueprint for American Prosperity initiative, “Mountain Megas: America’s Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper” describes and assesses the new supersized reality of the Intermountain West and proposes a more helpful role for the federal government in empowering regional leaders’ efforts to build a uniquely Western brand of prosperity that is at once more sustainable, productive, and inclusive than past eras of boom and bust.

Table Of Contents:
Executive Summary »
I.      Introduction »
II.     Megapolitan Development in the Intermountain West »
III.    Trends in America’s Fastest Growing, Most Urban Region »
IV.    Emerging Challenges and Opportunities »
V.     Forging a New Federal-Mega Agenda for the Intermountain West »
VI.    Conclusion »
Endnotes »
Selected References »

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Andrea Sarzynski

The New Suburban Politics: An Analysis of Metropolitan Voting Trends Since 2000

Alan Berube, Robert E. Lang and Thomas W. Sanchez — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Robert Lang, Thomas Sanchez and Alan Berube explore trends in metropolitan areas from recent national elections to gauge the outcome of the 2008 race. They employ a new suburban typology, identifying five distinct geographies, and show a shift toward Democratic majorities among voters as communities urbanize.

They find that during the previous races, densely populated areas in and around metropolitan cores tended to favor Democrats, while areas on the metropolitan fringe had huge returns for Republicans. However, the outlying areas most likely would not be able to hold off future Democratic gains as those communities become more urban.

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Boomburbs : The Rise of America's Accidental Cities

Jennifer LeFurgy, Robert E. Lang and Robert E. Lang — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Brookings Institution Press 2007 212pp.

A glance at a list of America's fastest growing "cities" reveals quite a surprise: most are really overgrown suburbs. Places such as Anaheim, California, Coral Springs, Florida, Naperville, Illinois, North Las Vegas, Nevada, and Plano, Texas, have swelled to big-city size with few people really noticing—including many of their ten million residents. These "boomburbs" are large, rapidly growing, incorporated communities of more than 100,000 residents that are not the biggest city in their region. Here, Robert E. Lang and Jennifer B. LeFurgy explain who lives in them, what they look like, how they are governed, and why their rise calls into question the definition of urban.

Located in over twenty-five major metro areas throughout the United States, numerous boomburbs have doubled, tripled, even quadrupled in size between census reports. Some are now more populated than traditional big cities. The population of the biggest boomburb-Mesa, Arizona-recently surpassed that of Minneapolis and Miami.

Typically large and sprawling, boomburbs are "accidental cities," but not because they lack planning. Many are made up of master-planned communities that have grown into one another. Few anticipated becoming big cities and unintentionally arrived at their status. Although boomburbs possess elements found in cities such as housing, retailing, offices, and entertainment, they lack large downtowns. But they can contain high-profile industries and entertainment venues: the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and Arizona Cardinals are among over a dozen major-league sports teams who play in the boomburbs.

Urban in fact but not in feel, these drive-by cities of highways, office parks, and shopping malls are much more horizontally built and less pedestrian friendly than most older suburbs. And, contrary to common perceptions of suburbia, they are not rich and elitist. Poverty is often seen in boomburb communities of small single-family homes, neighborhoods that once represented the American dream.

Boomburbs are a quintessential American landscape, embodying much of the nation's complexity, expansiveness, and ambiguity. This fascinating look at the often contradictory world of boomburbs examines why America's suburbs are thriving and how they are shaping the lives of millions of residents.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Jennifer LeFurgy

Jennifer B. LeFurgy is a writer and consultant in Alexandria, Virginia. She was formerly deputy director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech.

Robert E. Lang

Robert E. Lang is co director of the Metropolitan Institute and a professor in the Urban Affairs and Planning graduate program at Virginia Tech.

Robert E. Lang

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Redefining Urban and Suburban America : Evidence from Census 2000, Volume 3

Alan Berube, Bruce Katz and Robert E. Lang, eds. — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Brookings Institution Press 2006 275pp.

The results from Census 2000 continue to disclose remarkable population trends in the nation's cities and suburbs during the last decade of the twentieth century. They confirm that American metropolitan areas lie at the heart of the nation's most pronounced demographic and economic changes.

The first volume in the Redefining Urban and Suburban America series focused on population growth and decline, and the dramatic changes occurring in the racial and ethnic makeup of cities and suburbs. The second volume made clear that regional differences add texture to migration, income and poverty, and housing trends in the nation's largest cities and metropolitan areas.

This third volume in the series describes anew the changing shape of metropolitan America and the consequences for policies in areas such as employment, public services, and urban revitalization.

As decentralization of population and economic activity continued in most metropolitan areas, once-suburban areas have transformed into new engines of metropolitan growth, or "boomburbs." At the same time, some traditional central cities have enjoyed a population renaissance, thanks to the appeal of "living downtown," often close to workplaces and entertainment. The book's contributors probe the rise of these new growth centers and their impact on the metropolitan landscape.

Volume three also provides a closer look at the social and economic impacts of growth patterns in cities and suburbs, including how suburbanization has affected access to employment for minorities and lower-income workers, the way that housing development influences central city population growth and decline, and how these patterns are shifting the economic balance between older and newer suburbs.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Alan Berube

Bruce Katz

Robert E. Lang

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Redefining Urban and Suburban America : Evidence from Census 2000, Volume 2

Alan Berube, Bruce Katz and Robert E. Lang, eds. — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Brookings Institution Press 2005 348pp.

Results from Census 2000 reveal striking changes in the nation's cities and suburbs during the 1990s. Thanks to a decade of strong economic growth, concentrated poverty in the inner cities declined dramatically, homeownership rose among young minority household, and workers from abroad settled in growing metropolitan areas that had experienced little immigration to date.

The first volume in the Redefining Urban and Suburban America series focused on population growth and decline and dramatic changes occurring in the racial and ethnic makeup of cities and suburbs. This second volume focuses on an even richer set of subjects from Census 2000 and makes clear that regional differences add texture to these broader social and economic trends. Using data from the Census "long form," the contributors probe migration, income and poverty, and housing trends in the nation's largest cities and metropolitan areas.

This volume demonstrates the continued ascendance of the Sunbelt, whose cities and suburbs are growing magnets for both domestic migrants and immigrants. It portrays stunning improvements in the conditions of the nation's poorest neighborhoods, along-side growing numbers of lower-income households in cities. And the chapters highlight significant progress on homeownership amid a troubling counter-current of families increasingly burdened by housing costs.

Providing a closer look at the unprecedented social and economic changes taking place in the nation's oldest and newest communities, this volume explores the implications for a diverse set of policy areas, including metropolitan development patterns, immigrant incorporation, and the promotion of affordable housing and homeownership.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Alan Berube

Bruce Katz

Robert E. Lang

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U.S. Cities in the 'World City Network'

Peter J. Taylor and Robert E. Lang — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Findings

An examination of economic connections among cities' global advanced service firms finds that:

While New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are the U.S. leaders in global connectivity, San Francisco, Miami, Atlanta, and Washington are also important nodes in the world city network. A mixture of regional capitals—such as Boston and Seattle—and specialist cities—such as Houston, the world's energy capital—are found in the next tier. Somewhat surprisingly, dynamic and growing Phoenix and San Jose have relatively low connectivities.

U.S. cities overall—and particularly non-coastal cities—are generally less globally connected than their European Union and Pacific Asian counterparts. Sixteen EU cities and 11 Pacific Asian cities rank among the top 50 most globally-connected cities, while only seven U.S. cities make the cut. Chicago is the only high ranking U.S. city not located in a coastal state.

While important service connections exist among certain U.S. cities and particular global regions, U.S. cities are more strongly linked to other U.S. cities than to cities around the globe. New York is the only U.S. city with more non-U.S. cities than U.S. cities in its top ten list of strongest global connections. Only three non-U.S. cities make Miami's top 10 list, for example, while Pittsburgh's list contains none.

Even the most globally-connected U.S. cities are more locally oriented than cities in the EU. New York and Miami are the least locally oriented of U.S. cities, but even they are far more U.S.-centric in their connections than most European cities are EU-centric. A much larger number of EU cities boast strong connections to Latin America and Pacific Asia than cities in the U.S.

Beyond localism, functional linkages among firms are more important determinants of connectedness than geography alone. While Europe has no American Pacific Coast city linkages, for example, it has many international financial centers with strong connections to the rising banking and finance hubs of Pacific Asia. Many of these cities, as well as New York, are much more oriented to the Pacific Rim than San Francisco, Seattle, or even Los Angeles.

As cities aim to position themselves better economically, they must remember that they operate in a global marketplace. Cities able to grow and attract globally-connected, high-value service firms can access, and benefit from, a worldwide array of customers, workers, and contracted services, ultimately boosting quality growth at home.

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Robert E. Lang

Beyond Edge City: Office Sprawl in South Florida

Robert E. Lang — Sat, 01 Mar 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Findings

An analysis of office development in South Florida between 1987 and 2002 finds that:

Of 13 large U.S. office markets studied, South Florida had the lowest percentage of its office space in its major downtown, Miami, in 1999. Only 13 percent of South Florida's office space is located in its central business district (CBD), compared to a median of nearly 30 percent for all 13 markets.
Virtually all office growth in Miami-Dade County in the past 15 years occurred outside of Miami's downtown. From 1987 to 2002, Miami-Dade's non-CBD market grew 60.3 percent to include nearly 30 million square feet of office space.

In contrast, office space in Miami's CBD increased just 4.7 percent over this time period.
Out of 13 office markets, South Florida has the largest percentage of its office space located "Edgeless Cities"--a form of small-scale and scattered office development that never reaches the critical mass of an Edge City. In 1999, two-thirds (66 percent) of South Florida's current office space could be found in Edgeless Cities. In Philadelphia--the only other predominantly "edgeless" market of the 13--Edgeless Cities contain just 54 percent of the market's office space.

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Robert E. Lang

Edgeless Cities : Exploring the Elusive Metropolis

Robert E. Lang — Mon, 24 Feb 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Brookings Institution Press and Brookings Metro Series 2003 154pp.

Edgeless cities are a sprawling form of development that accounts for the bulk of office space found outside of downtowns. Every major metropolitan area has them: vast swaths of isolated buildings that are neither pedestrian friendly, nor easily accessible by public transit, and do not lend themselves to mixed use. While critics of urban sprawl tend to focus on the social impact of "edge cities"—developments that combine large-scale office parks with major retail and housing—edgeless cities, despite their ubiquity, are difficult to define or even locate. While they stay under the radar of critics, they represent a significant departure in the way American cities are built and are very likely the harbingers of a suburban future almost no one has anticipated.

Edgeless Cities explores America's new metropolitan form by examining the growth and spatial structure of suburban office space across the nation. Inspired by Myron Orfield's groundbreaking Metropolitics(Brookings, 1997), Robert Lang uses data, illustrations, maps, and photos to delineate between two types of suburban office development—bounded and edgeless. The book covers the evolving geography of rental office space in thirteen of the country's largest markets, which together contain more than 2.6 billion square feet of office space and 26,000 buildings: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington.

Lang discusses how edgeless cities differ from traditional office areas. He also provides an overview of national, regional, and metropolitan office markets, covers ways to map and measure them, and discusses the challenges urban policymakers and practitioners will face as this new suburban form continues to spread.

Until now, edgeless cities have been the unstudied phenomena of the new metropolis. Lang's conceptual approach reframes the current thinking on suburban sprawl and provides a valuable resource for future policy discussions surrounding smart growth issues.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert E. Lang

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Redefining Urban and Suburban America : Evidence from Census 2000

Bruce Katz and Robert E. Lang, eds. — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Brookings Institution Press and Brookings Metro Series 2003 305pp.

The early returns from Census 2000 data show that the United States continued to undergo dynamic changes in the 1990s, with cities and suburbs providing the locus of most of the volatility. Metropolitan areas are growing more diverse—especially with the influx of new immigrants—the population is aging, and the make-up of households is shifting. Singles and empty-nesters now surpass families with children in many suburbs.

The contributors to this book review data on population, race and ethnicity, and household composition, provided by the Census's "short form," and attempt to respond to three simple queries:

Are cities coming back?
Are all suburbs growing?
Are cities and suburbs becoming more alike?

Regional trends muddy the picture. Communities in the Northeast and Midwest are generally growing slowly, while those in the South and West are experiencing explosive growth ("Warm, dry places grew. Cold, wet places declined," note two authors). Some cities are robust, others are distressed. Some suburbs are bedroom communities, others are hot employment centers, while still others are deteriorating. And while some cities' cores may have been intensely developed, including those in the Northeast and Midwest, and seen population increases, the areas surrounding the cores may have declined significantly.

Trends in population confirm an increasingly diverse population in both metropolitan and suburban areas with the influx of Hispanic and Asian immigrants and with majority populations of central cities for the first time being made up of minority groups. Census 2000 also reveals that the overall level of black-to-nonblack segregation has reached its lowest point since 1920, although high segregation remains in many areas.

Redefining Urban and Suburban America explores these demographic trends and their complexities, along with their implications for the policies and politics shaping metropolitan America. The shifts discussed here have significant influence in demand for housing and schools, childcare and healthcare, as well as private goods and services.

Contributors include: Alan Berube (Brookings Institution); Benjamin Forman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); William H. Frey (University of Michigan, Milken Institute); Edward L. Glaeser (Harvard University); John R. Logan (University at Albany, State University of New York), William H. Lucy (University of Virginia); David L. Phillips (University of Virginia); Jesse M. Shapiro (Harvard University), Patrick A. Simmons (Fannie Mae Foundationa); Audrey Singer (Brookings Institution); Rebecca R. Sohmer (Fannie Mae Foundation); Roberto Suro (Pew Hispanic Center); Jacob L. Vigdor (Duke University.

Brookings Metro Series

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Bruce Katz

Robert E. Lang

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Redefining Urban and Suburban America : Evidence from Census 2000

Bruce Katz and Robert E. Lang, eds. — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Brookings Institution Press and Brookings Metro Series 2003 305pp.

The contributors to this book review data on population, race and ethnicity, and household composition, provided by the Census's "short form," and attempt to respond to three simple queries:

Are cities coming back?
Are all suburbs growing?
Are cities and suburbs becoming more alike?

Brookings Metro Series

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Bruce Katz

Robert E. Lang

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Office Sprawl: The Evolving Geography of Business

Robert E. Lang — Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 -0400

Suburbs now contain the majority of office space in many of the country's top metropolitan office markets, according to this survey. Before 1980, central cities dominated the office market, but over the last two decades, office space has become much more dispersed. A new urban form, an "edgeless city," is emerging.

Key Findings

An analysis of the location of office space in 13 of the nation?s largest metropolitan commercial real estate markets between 1979 and 1999 found that:

Between 1979 and 1999, cities' share of metropolitan office space significantly diminished.1979, 74 percent of office space was found in central cities and only 26 percent was found in sub-urbs. By 1999, the central city share of office space dropped to 58 percent while the suburban share grew to 42 percent.

Distribution of urban and suburban office space varies greatly among metropolitan areas.re are five metropolitan areas where the majority of the metropolitan office space is found within the core central city (Houston, Dallas, Chicago, New York, and Denver) and five metropolitan areas with the majority of space in the suburbs (Philadelphia, Atlanta, Washington, DC, Miami, and Detroit). In three metropolitan areas (Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles), there is roughly even division.

Metropolitan commercial office space is no longer found within a few high density clusters. While 38 percent of all office space in 1999 was located in a metropolitan area's traditional downtown, nearly the same amount (37 percent) was found in highly dispersed, "edgeless" locations lacking well-defined boundaries and extending over tens if not hundreds of square miles of urban space.

In 1999, New York and Chicago were the only metropolitan areas with the majority of office space located in their primary downtown. Philadelphia and Miami already have more than half their office space in "edgeless" locations.

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Robert E. Lang