Brookings: Topics - U.S. Metro Areas

The Metropolitan Revolution : How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy

Jennifer Bradley and Bruce Katz — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Brookings Institution Press 2013 300pp.

Synopsis:

A revolution is stirring in America. Across the nation cities and metropolitan areas, and the networks of pragmatic leaders who govern them, are taking on the big issues that Washington won’t, or can’t, solve. They are reshaping our economy and fixing our broken political system.

The Metropolitan Revolution is a national movement, and the book describes how it is taking root in New York City, where efforts are under way to diversify the city’s vast economy; in Portland, Oregon, which is selling the “sustainability” solutions it has perfected to other cities around the world; in Northeast Ohio, where groups are using industrial-age skills to invent new twenty-first-century materials, tools, and processes; in Houston, where a modern settlement house helps immigrants climb the employment ladder; in Miami, where innovators are forging strong ties with Brazil and other nations; in Denver and Los Angeles, where leaders are breaking political barriers and building world-class metropolises; and in Boston and Detroit, where innovation districts are hatching ideas to power these economies for the next century.

Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley highlight these success stories and the people behind them in order to share lessons and catalyze action. This revolution is happening, and every community in the country can benefit.

The Tour:

The Metropolitan Revolution is going on the road. Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley will appear with metropolitan leaders across the country to discuss the book and local innovations underway in each place. The tour will include stops in Berkeley, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Washington, DC and more.

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Praise for The Metropolitan Revolution:

“The Metropolitan Revolution upends conventional wisdom and makes the case for how our cities and metros are leading American change and progress: they are transforming our national economy, political conversation, and collective destiny from the bottom up like never before. A must-read for anyone working toward a brighter future for our cities and our nation.”
—Mayor Cory Booker

“The Metropolitan Revolution builds on twenty years of studying metropolitan areas and hundreds of thousands of miles traveling to them around the globe, and the result is an exciting guide to the new world economy - urban, networked, innovative, collaborative, and driven by human potential.”
—Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Henry G. Cisneros

“Being mayor of Chicago is the best job I’ve ever had in public life. Katz and Bradley totally get it: the real power to change America lies in our cities and metros.”
—Mayor Rahm Emanuel

“With paralysis in Washington, public policy solutions will come from successful metropolitan regions, the clinical trials of our future. We are well into this journey, but never has it been explained with such insight and analysis until The Metropolitan Revolution.”
—Governor Jon Huntsman

“Just when ‘by the people, for the people’ seems like an anachronism, cities are giving it new meaning, fueled by twenty-first century technology. Every citizen needs to understand the metropolitan revolution. If we change cities, we change the country.”
—Jennifer Pahlka, Founder and Executive Director, Code for America

“This book captures the energy and excitement bubbling up in cities across America. This is ‘do it yourself’ urbanism of the highest order, and it is altering our landscape and our country.”
—Janette Sadik-Khan, Commissioner, New York City Department of Transportation

“Through real-world examples, The Metropolitan Revolution brings to life how America's cities and suburbs drive innovation to solve problems and seize opportunities. This book is a call to action beyond Washington, where metro leaders join together and simply get stuff done.”
—Mayor Scott Smith

“The Metropolitan Revolution is compelling reading on how our federal system is a powerful advantage in global competitiveness. This book is indispensable for business and elected leaders on realizing the economic potential of metropolitan areas for their citizens and the country.”
—Treasury Secretary, Robert E. Rubin

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Jennifer Bradley

Bruce Katz

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Are Public Pensions Keeping Up with the Times?

Richard W. Johnson, Matthew M. Chingos and Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:56:00 -0400

Retirement plans for public employees in the United States face serious challenges: By their own calculations, states and localities are $900 billion short of the funds they need to set aside to pay for benefits they have already promised their employees, write the Urban Institute’s Richard W. Johnson and the Brookings Institution’s Matthew M. Chingos and Grover J. Whitehurst. But the problem is far more serious than currently imagined. What states accountants won’t admit, Chingos, Whitehurst and Johnson argue, is that the funding problem is much worse than states’ calculations show.

The underfunding problem has two key components: First, by their own calculations, most states are not contributing enough to keep up with the pension promises they are making to their employees. Second, states’ calculations seriously understate the extent of the funding problem. Most states assume that they will earn an average rate of return of 8 percent a year on their pension funds, a highly unlikely outcome in the current economic environment. This unrealistic assumption still produces a staggering unfunded liability: $0.9 trillion in 2011. Using a more reasonable assumption of a 5 percent return increases the unfunded liability to $2.7 trillion, these scholars estimate, which implies that the average state has only funded half of its pension promises. A funding gap of $2.7 trillion is more than four times the $607 billion in general outstanding debt on states’ books in 2012, Chingos, Whitehurst and Johnson report.

And many public employee pension systems also have design features that, even if the pensions are properly funded, compromise state and local governments’ ability to attract and retain the best employees, these writers assert. Young workers have little incentive to join the state’s workforce unless they plan to remain on the payroll for at least 25 years. Those who leave their jobs earlier forgo a significant portion of the retirement benefits from their employer. This is because most pension systems provide very steep rewards late in employees’ careers, penalizing those who work for the state for “only” 10 or 20 years. But there is also a problem at the other end of the career ladder, with pension systems punishing employees for staying too long past normal retirement age. This design feature makes it difficult for the state to retain experienced older workers, many of whom have specialized skills and deep institutional knowledge that are difficult to replace.

As debate swirls around how to properly fund public employee benefits, this report assesses the real challenges facing state and local government retirement plans and details the problems facing public employee pension systems across the country. Chingos, Whitehurst and Johnson’s comprehensive examination of the existing research on this topic highlights the many problems facing these pension plans, including the underfunding that threatens states’ economic futures and outdated design features that cripple states’ ability to recruit and retain the best public servants.

In the video below, Chingos and Johnson discuss the issues raised in the paper:

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Are Public Pension Plans Keeping Up With the Times?

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Are Public Pension Plans Keeping Up With the Times?

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Image Source: © Radovan Stoklasa / Reuters

The Hidden STEM Economy: Key Findings

Jonathan Rothwell — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:36:00 -0400

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Jonathan Rothwell

Home Prices on the Rise Across U.S.

Robert E. Lang — Wed, 29 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The latest S&P Case-Shiller home price index numbers indicate an upswing in the Las Vegas housing market. Rob Lang speaks with NPR's "All Things Considered" about the cause of this development and what it means for the future of the housing market. Click here to hear the interview.

SIEGEL: Well, what does this feel like to you? Is it just that Las Vegas real estate is cheap and hardly anything is a great investment these days, so why not buy some? Or are people showing confidence in the economy of the city and buying for that reason? What's going on?

LANG: Consumer confidence is up. And the other thing is that these are very attractive homes for the price to this point still. I mean, you were in a house and it was just over 200,000, maybe it's 250,000, and it's maybe $112 a square foot.

We're talking houses that have pools and spas in them and, you know, and amenities that in the rest of the country would be considered luxurious. This is part of the equation, I think, people were missing when they imagine that these Phoenixes and Las Vegases were done for all time. That they're still attractive to retire in and the climate is mild, you know, the taxes are low. It's an easy place to have fairly modest assets and buy a nice house and live a high-quality life.

Authors

Robert E. Lang

Publication: NPR

The Affordable Care Act and Designing the District of Columbia's Health Benefits Exchange

Alice M. Rivlin — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:59:00 -0400

Before the Health Committee of the District of Columbia Council, Alice Rivlin encourages the Committee to implement the health benefits exchanges of the Affordable Care Act in order to provide universal affordable health care coverage. Explaining that the District has passed tests regarding Medicare and Medicaid, Rivlin describes the District's current health delivery system, explaining the landscape of health care carriers for groups and individuals and recommending that the health exchange become the sole venue for the purchase of individual and small business health insurance.

I am happy to testify on the bill before this Committee, “Better Prices, Better Quality, Better Choices for Health Coverage Amendment Act of 2013,” transmitted by Mayor Vincent C. Gray on behalf of the DC Health Benefit Exchange Authority. I strongly support the bill.

The federal Affordable Care Act (ACA), passed in 2010, is a major step toward an American health care system that covers almost everyone at sustainable cost. Implementation of the ACA is a long-sought opportunity to solve a disgraceful national problem—the fact that a large and growing share of the population cannot afford health insurance—as well as a chance to improve the quality and value of care delivered. As you know, the legislation was controversial at the national level, but the District welcomed it as an opportunity to realize our community’s goal of affordable health care coverage for all.

The District chose to comply with the ACA by creating its own health benefits exchange rather than letting the federal government do it. The District assembled a highly qualified Health Benefit Exchange Board, which recruited a strong professional staff and has implemented the ACA with energy and dispatch. Recently, the District’s exchange passed Phase Two testing with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This indicates that the District is expected to be ready to enroll customers on October 1, 2013, and begin coverage on January 1, 2014. We should all be proud of the District for becoming a leader and role model in implementing the ACA, while some States have delayed and are behind schedule.

The exchange will require carriers to compete with one another by displaying qualified plans in transparent form in an electronic market place and allowing consumers to select the best plan for them. Some will receive federal income-tested subsidies to make plans more affordable. This is a win-win: DC residents will receive better health insurance at a lower cost and carriers will sell more insurance policies.

Designing the best exchange for the District has been challenging because DC’s health insurance market is small and highly concentrated. There are only four carriers one of which one controls more than three quarters of the individual and small group markets. The individual market is especially small—in part because of DC’s past success in reducing the number of uninsured residents through generous Medicaid eligibility and the creation of the Alliance. The individual market is estimated to fall below the 100,000 participants that the Urban Institute and others estimate to be the minimum size of the risk pool needed for an exchange to operate efficiently. In view of the small size and high concentration of the market, the DC Health Benefit Authority recommended, and the Council supported, merging the individual and small group markets after a transition period. Merging the markets recognizes that separate exchanges for the individual and small group markets would have too few carriers and too few enrollees to achieve the stability and efficiency that can be achieved in a merged market.

Now the Council is considering whether to make the exchange the sole venue for the purchase of individual and small business health insurance in the District. We believe that this measure will maximize competition, transparency, and the insurance choices available to consumers. Conversely, retaining a separate market outside the exchange will reduce the risk pool below critical size and invite carriers to attempt to attract younger, healthier individuals and employer groups outside the exchange, leaving higher risks in the exchange. In a small market with a dominant insurer, it is essential that the exchange risk pool be as inclusive as possible, both to stabilize the exchange—which is the only source of federal subsidies for District residents with modest incomes—and to maximize transparency and competition.

These design decisions are difficult, but, on balance, it seems wise to require that all DC individual and small business plans be purchased on the exchange with a single risk pool, to allow carriers to offer as many different plans as they want on the exchange, and to work hard to make the exchange as transparent and user friendly as possible. Moreover, the Board’s transition plan carefully balances the goal of full and speedy implementation with the needs of individuals and small business. The transition plan will allow small businesses to enter the health exchange over a two-year transition period, permitting small businesses to wait until the market settles should they feel the need.

Over the past couple of decades DC has gone from a city with a shamefully inadequate health system to a leader in provision of affordable health coverage and improving access to good quality care. We can all take pride in the steps DC has made to take advantage of the opportunity offered by the ACA to move to universal affordable coverage by acting quickly to implement it competently and expeditiously.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

Authors

Alice M. Rivlin

Publication: The Health Committee of the DC Council

Image Source: © Joshua Roberts / Reuters

Job Sprawl Stalls: The Great Recession and Metropolitan Employment Location

Elizabeth Kneebone — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

As policymakers and regional leaders work to grow jobs and connect residents to economic opportunity following the Great Recession, where jobs locate matters. The location of employment within a metro area intersects with a range of policy issues—from transportation to workforce development to regional innovation—that affect a region’s long-term health, prosperity, and social inclusion.

Job Sprawl in 100 Largest Metropolitan Areas, 2010
Share of jobs 10-35 miles from a central business district
Click a metro area to view its detailed profile (PDF)

An analysis of the location of private-sector employment within 35 miles of a downtown in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas from 2007 to 2010, and across the 2000s, finds:

Steep employment losses following the Great Recession stalled the steady decentralization of jobs that characterized the early to mid-2000s. After dropping 2 percentage points from 2000 to 2007, the share of metropolitan jobs within 3 miles of downtown stabilized from 2007 to 2010. However, by 2010 nearly twice the share of jobs was located at least 10 miles away from downtown (43 percent) as within 3 miles of downtown (23 percent).

Job losses in industries hit hardest by the downturn, including construction and manufacturing, helped check employment decentralization in the late 2000s. Together, construction, manufacturing, and retail—each among the most decentralized of major industries—accounted for almost 60 percent of all job losses between 2007 and 2010, with half of those losses occurring at least 10 miles from downtown.

In all but nine of the 100 largest metro areas, the share of jobs located within three miles of downtown declined during the 2000s. Only Washington, D.C. experienced an increase in both the number and share of jobs located in the urban core during the 2000s. At the same time, the share of jobs at least 10 miles from downtown rose in 85 regions between 2000 and 2010.

A metro area’s total employment, and policy and planning decisions around land use, economic development, and zoning, help shape the location of its jobs. Employment is more decentralized in metro areas with at least 500,000 jobs. But even large metro areas with high degrees of job decentralization like Chicago and Detroit concentrate many of their jobs in dense locations outside the urban core.

In the wake of the Great Recession, policymakers and regional leaders have the opportunity to make strategic decisions about how they will pursue metropolitan growth. If the next period of economic expansion reinforces low-density, diffuse growth in metropolitan America, it will be that much harder for metro areas to achieve sustainable and inclusive growth over the long term.

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Elizabeth Kneebone

Image Source: © Gary Cameron / Reuters

State and Local Leaders Double Down on Infrastructure

Robert Puentes — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 10:35:00 -0400

Cautious optimism followed President Obama's FY2014 budget request to rebuild and reinvest in America's infrastructure.

The proposal highlighted infrastructure as a fundamental driver of the nation's economy and critical asset for its long-term recovery. Specifically, the request reiterates the determined proposals to create a national infrastructure bank, build-out an American high-speed rail system, invest in clean energy, modernize the air traffic control network and the electrical grid, and reinvest in state-of-good repair projects, among other things.

The president's infrastructure package has a lot of good ideas. What it does not have is a lot of money.

Undaunted, state and metropolitan leaders are coming to Washington this week with their own ambitious and creative strategies to make their infrastructure goals a reality and looking to the federal government to engage in new partnerships with government, labor, and institutional investors to accelerate the construction and deployment of new infrastructure.

In many ways, Washington is acknowledging this renaissance and moving to embrace it. Also included in the president's request are plans to cut regulatory red tape in order to prioritize projects and enable better use of public/private partnerships. These are welcome acknowledgments of the principal role state and local leaders play in selecting, financing, and building infrastructure and, given their miniscule price tag, ought to be legislative slam dunks.

Without a doubt, unfunded pension obligations and other debt burdens facing state and municipal governments limit the availability of public funds to pay for necessary infrastructure. And though interest rates remain at historically low levels, the ability of many governments to borrow from the capital markets is limited by debt caps and weak credit ratings.

So states and metros are looking beyond traditional municipal debt markets to find new lower cost, lower risk, and higher impact ways to pay for essential infrastructure projects:

Increasingly, public infrastructure investment occurs through state revolving loan funds and so-called "infrastructure banks." These institutions fund and finance a broad array of projects, ranging from local road maintenance and highway construction (e.g., Florida’s State Infrastructure Bank) to essential water infrastructure (e.g., New York’s state revolving funds) to energy efficiency (e.g., Connecticut's green bank.) While they are not for-profit institutions in the traditional banking context, they rely on principal repayments, bonds, interest and fees to, ideally, re-capitalize and replenish the fund as a perpetual source of debt financing. The model has also gained traction at the sub-state level in Chicago and in the District of Columbia.

At the same time, state officials are also working to design innovative governance and institutional tools capable of overcoming the bureaucratic and technical barriers that can slow or even derail projects. These efforts are clearing the way for new infusions of private capital and streamlined project delivery. States like Virginia, Michigan, Colorado, and Georgia have new offices designed to tackle bottlenecks in public/private partnerships, develop innovative project ideas, and protect the public interest.

To develop consistent and predictable deal flow and ensure private investors’ continued engagement with U.S. infrastructure markets, stakeholders from California, Oregon, Washington State, and British Columbia created the West Coast Infrastructure Exchange (WCX.) The WCX seeks to establish a common market for infrastructure projects on the West Coast by coordinating cross-border infrastructure investments, facilitating procurements, and creating a project clearinghouse for regional infrastructure investments. WCX aims to create a robust market for the nearly $1 trillion in infrastructure projects that the region needs to develop.

Such efforts can be replicated elsewhere around the country. One common thread to the flurry of activity is the idea that stakeholders from all levels of government and the private sector (plus bi-partisan campaigns like Building America's Future and innovative collaboratives like Living Cities) can catalyze a new field of practice, get states ready for new kinds of investment, and explicitly connect long-term economic strategies with infrastructure planning and prioritization.

Our competitors, in mature and emerging economies alike, are in the process of making these kinds of investments and, by so doing, catalyzing productive and sustainable growth. In the United States, it looks like we are finally ready to start moving.

Authors

Robert Puentes

Immigration Facts on Foreign Students

Neil G. Ruiz — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:04:00 -0400

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Neil G. Ruiz

America’s Foreign Students and Immigration Reform

Neil G. Ruiz — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:27:00 -0400

Despite bipartisan consensus in favor of retaining foreign students studying at U.S. universities to make America economically competitive, Congress continues to disagree over the details. Over the past couple of years, we have seen introduced a panoply of cleverly-named legislative proposals—see STAPLE, STEM, STAR, BRAINS, and SMART—to create a green card for foreign students receiving graduate degrees in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields can work in the United States immediately post-graduation. Yet, some fear that an accelerated inflow of foreign workers may depress wages and crowd out opportunities for Americans. Very soon, the American public will see some version of these proposals in a much-anticipated comprehensive immigration reform bill.

To understand the potential impact of this legislation, the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program has compiled new facts about America’s foreign student population. This is part of a new Brookings Immigration Facts series, which will shed light on the potential national and local impacts of immigration reform.

If legislation is passed to create an easier pathway for retaining foreign students that obtain advanced STEM degrees at U.S. universities, the impact could be large: about 96,200 incoming foreign students on F-1 visas in 2010 could have become eligible for a green card upon graduation. Currently, only a fraction of these students attain a temporary skilled-worker visa after graduating. The H-1B visa program has been one of the main pathways for retaining American-trained foreign students, though only 19,922 H-1B recipients in 2010 (26 percent of all H-1B visas) were foreigners with advanced degrees from U.S. universities.

The reforms could disproportionately impact particular nationalities and localities. The large majority of America’s foreign master’s and doctoral STEM degree students hail from India and China, comprising 54 and 22 percent respectively, of all such students. Under the current visa system, citizens from these two countries face waiting times that exceed 10 years for a green card due to country caps backlogs.

The impact of increased retention of America’s foreign students would vary geographically. Smaller metropolitan areas in the middle of the country, home to many of the colleges and universities with the largest shares of STEM students from foreign countries, could experience an influx of potential workers already residing in their local economies. According to a previous Brookings study on the geographic demand for H-1B workers, metro areas in this part of the country rank among the highest for the STEM share of H-1B workers requested by employers.

As Congress debates over the details in creating visas to retain America’s foreign students, they must study the facts to ensure that smart policy is adopted.

Authors

Neil G. Ruiz

Image Source: © Jonathan Alcorn / Reuters

Migration and the Metropolis

Audrey Singer — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 08:35:00 -0400

Editor's Note: Audrey Singer contributed to Cities of Migration’s Practice to Policy: Lessons from Local Leadership on Immigrant Integration with the following piece on the emergence of new settlement patterns for immigrants in U.S. and international metropolitan areas and their implications for integration.

In the 21st century, immigration continues to change cities and nations worldwide. One-fifth of the world’s immigrants live in the United States where the foreign-born population now exceeds 40 million, making up 13% of the national population. Over the last two decades, nearly 20 million immigrants arrived in the U.S. These unprecedented levels of immigration have changed the character of many places, urban, suburban and rural. And the U.S. is not alone – no less than 15 European Union nations have foreignborn populations exceeding 10%, while in Australia and Canada, immigrants make up 22% and 20% of the general populations, respectively.

While we often think of immigrants as moving from one country to another, really they arrive from a particular place and settle in a particular community, usually a metropolitan area. In the U.S., for example, the vast majority of immigrants (95%) live within one of 366 metropolitan areas, which vary considerably in size, industrial structure, and demographic composition. And within metropolitan areas, where they live varies: they reside in primary cities, dense and mature suburbs, and emerging suburbs and exurbs extending to the urban fringe. Where an immigrant arrives and settles is very important to the immigrant integration process, which largely takes place on the local level. Immigrants live in neighborhoods, go to work, set up businesses, and send their children to school – all of which happens at the local level.

These metropolitan contexts are important for understanding how immigrants fit into local labour and housing markets, and how they interact with institutions such as schools, transportation systems and healthcare systems. In many countries, especially those built on immigration, several metropolitan areas have had a continuous history of receiving immigrants. In the United States, the cities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston are the largest continuous immigrant gateways. In Europe, major capitals like London, Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris have played similar roles. These places have been incorporating immigrants for over 100 years and have a thick social service infrastructure and strong identification as immigrant destinations. In the United States, Los Angeles, Houston and Miami are among the largest immigrant destinations, yet their experience began only after World War II. Other cities, such as Dublin and Calgary, have just recently begun to receive immigrants in large numbers, in the past two decades or less, and may be less prepared for the changes that affect major institutions.

In the United States, due in part to economic restructuring and “new economy” industrial growth in technology and service sectors, metropolitan settlement trends have taken at least two new turns over the past two decades. After decades of just a few established places drawing the majority of immigrants, new opportunities in metro areas with little history of receiving immigrants saw significant spikes to their foreign-born populations. Coming out of the 2000s, metropolitan areas that experienced the greatest numeric growth of their foreign-born population held some surprises. These “second-tier” metro areas emerged as immigrant destinations beginning in the 1990s such as Atlanta, Austin (Texas), Phoenix, and Las Vegas. In Europe, cities like Barcelona, Copenhagen and Malmo have experienced a similar process. Some old immigrant gateways have now re-emerged as major destinations; for example, Philadelphia, Seattle and Sacramento (California) in the United States. Counterparts elsewhere include Bremen (Germany) and Winnipeg (Canada).

In a second shift, immigrants in the U.S. and Canada are bypassing cities in great numbers and settling directly in suburban areas. In the early 20th century wave of immigration, during the great period of industrialization, immigrants moved to cities to be close to jobs. Now as jobs have decentralized and as suburban opportunities have opened up, there are more immigrants residing in suburbs than in cities. Housing availability and affordability, the presence of ethnic communities, and the ubiquity of the automobile influence immigrants’ decisions to settle in suburban areas. Even three decades ago, similar shares of immigrants lived in the cities and the suburbs of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States, for example, but by 2010, only 33% of U.S. immigrants lived in central cities of the 100 largest metro areas, while 51% lived in their suburbs. Similarly, in 2006, of recent immigrants to the traditional gateway of Vancouver, Canada, 46% actually lived in the suburbs Richmond, Burnaby and Surrey.

Immigrants have made inroads to new destination areas, large and small, urban and suburban. The shift to suburban areas means that central cities are no longer the dominant entry point for immigrants and the consequence is that suburban areas are becoming more diverse places with regard to race and ethnicity, language, and religion.

These new patterns are not without conflict and stress. Major institutions in new metropolitan destinations now confront serving this diverse population. Many areas in the United States have yet to recover from the affects of the recession and immigrants are often viewed as competitors for jobs and scarce public resources. In some of those places that experienced recent fast immigrant growth, state and local measures to control immigration, especially unauthorized immigration, have been proposed or legislated.

Many urban areas have welcomed immigrants, including places with well-established foreign-born populations, and those that started receiving and integrating immigrants more recently. Metropolitan areas are on the front lines of the economic integration of immigrants. Increasingly, some cities such as former U.S. gateways Detroit, Pittsburgh and Cleveland are endeavouring to attract and retain immigrants to stem population loss and to stimulate economic activity. Some areas are also investing in immigrants that are already here, as a strategy to help local businesses and economies, as well as immigrants, their families and the communities in which they live. Cities that are the most forward-looking, that have the most pragmatic view on immigrants, are the ones that are reaching out and creating environments that immigrants can not only survive in but thrive in. They are putting out the welcome mat for immigrant newcomers.

Authors

Audrey Singer

Publication: Cities of Migration

Metropolitan Washington: A New Immigrant Gateway

Audrey Singer — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's Note: In an introductory chapter to Hispanic Migration and Urban Development: Studies from Washington, DC (Emerald Group Publishing, 2012), Audrey Singer describes the ascent of metropolitan Washington from an area with low levels of immigration to a major U.S. destination.

ABSTRACT

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the ascent of Metropolitan Washington from an area with low levels of immigration area to a major U.S. destination.

Methodology/approach: Drawing on a growing body of research on immigration to Washington, D.C. and data from the American Community Survey (ACS), trends are examined in detail to illustrate how this immigrant gateway fits into the national historical picture.

Findings: The findings analyze the historical comparative settlement patterns of immigrants to the United States to demonstrate how Washington has emerged as the 7th largest immigrant gateway. It further analyzes metropolitan level data on country of origin and residence to show the diversity of the immigrant population and their disbursal to suburban areas from the central core over the past four decades.

Social implications: The paper also highlights some conflict in new suburban destinations within metropolitan Washington that experienced fast and recent growth. But immigrant incorporation has worked well in the past and Washington can continue to work to be a model of immigrant integration as local organizations, governments, and communities continue to confront the challenges of immigration in productive and sustainable ways.

Originality/value of paper: This paper combines the historical settlement of immigrants across America with and in depth examination of one of the newest and largest immigrant gateways, the U.S. capitol region, Washington, D.C.

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Authors

Audrey Singer

Publication: Emerald Group Publishing

The 2014 H-1B Visa Race Begins Today

Neil G. Ruiz and Jill H. Wilson — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 11:09:00 -0400

Reforming immigration may be at the top of the news, but as it dominates the headlines our existing system continues apace.

To wit: Today marks the first day U.S. employers can submit H-1B visa applications to the federal government for fiscal year 2014 (for visas beginning on October 1, 2013 through September 30, 2014). Every year at the beginning of April, employers race for a limited number of H-1B visas available—currently set at 85,000, including 20,000 that are set aside for foreign graduates with advanced degrees from American universities. These visas are given on a first-come, first-served basis, resulting in this frenzy.

Last year the race for H-1B visas ended in 10 weeks, whereas the year before, amid a more sluggish economy, it took three times longer. As our report, “The Search for Skills,” highlighted, the demand for H-1B visas over the past decade fluctuated in response to both economic and political conditions. The trend has been one of growth, with the exception of significant declines in demand after the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2001, September 11, 2011, and the Great Recession that started in 2007.

Since the cap was reached last year on June 11, many of those employers denied an H-1B visa have waited 294 days to file a new application. This long wait period, coupled with better economic conditions, may prompt a quicker end to the race this year. Some predict that the H-1B cap might be reached within five days . But the uncertainty of both the application period and the chance of success make it difficult for employers to predict whether a visa will be available to hire foreign candidates. This makes human resource planning tricky, to say the least.

The comprehensive immigration reform debate kicked off with a Senate bill called the Immigration and Innovation Act of 2013 (I-Squared Act). Under this proposal, instead of a static cap, there would be an “H-1B escalator” that automatically adjusts the cap depending on demand. The proposal raises the initial H-1B cap to 115,000 and, depending on how quickly the cap is met in a given year, it would increase incrementally, by up to 20,000 visas the following year. Likewise, if the cap is not met in a given year, it would decrease by no more than 20,000 visas the following year. The I-Squared Act proposes that the cap be no fewer than 115,000 and no greater than 300,000. At the very least, it would take 10 consecutive years of reaching the cap within 45 days to hit the upper limit of 300,000 visas.

The I-Squared Act also proposes to allow foreign students to apply for a permanent green card, to provide unlimited H-1B visas for foreigners with U.S. advanced degrees, to “staple” permanent green cards to graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) earned by foreigners at U.S. universities, and to increase visa fees that would be invested in educating the American workforce in STEM. Some or all of these proposals might be included in the much-anticipated comprehensive immigration reform bill that the Senate “Gang of Eight” is scheduled to introduce sometime this month. A group of House members have also been hammering out a plan that they may make public soon.

The current immigration reform debate is a great opportunity to overhaul the system and move away from an arbitrary race against time for H-1B visas. A new method that structures America’s future immigration system to better meet the demand for high-skilled workers—through less-arbitrary H-1B visa caps, new visa classes, and better-targeted workforce training—will be welcomed by employers and workers alike.

If the H-1B visa system is revamped, this may be the last time we see the race to the H-1B visa cap.

Authors

Neil G. Ruiz
Jill H. Wilson

GCI Atlanta: Greater Atlanta and the Next Economy

Bruce Katz — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's Note: On March 20, 2013, Brookings vice president Bruce Katz spoke at the Metro Atlanta convening of the Global Cities Initiative, a joint project of Brookings and JPMorgan Chase to catalyze high-level discussions of metropolitan leadership in the world economy and the actions metro leaders can take to improve trade relationships with cities in mature and rising markets. Hosted by the Georgia Institute of Technology, the forum brought together distinguished regional, national, and international leaders from the business, civic, government, and philanthropic communities to explore how the Atlanta metropolitan area can enhance its ability to compete globally.

Bruce Katz - Global Cities Initiative

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Bruce Katz

GCI Atlanta Rountable: Atlanta from the Air

Adie Tomer — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's Note: On March 20, 2013, as part of the Metro Atlanta convening of the Global Cities Initiative, Brookings helped lead a roundtable to focus on the role of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in generating economic activity, both local and global. The conversation, which included a presentation by Brookings’s Adie Tomer, senior research associate, associate fellow. and co-author of Global Gateways: International Aviation in Metropolitan America, built on efforts underway by Mayor Kasim Reed, Invest Atlanta, the Metro Atlanta Chamber, and the Atlanta Regional Commission to fully tap the economic potential of the airport.

Adie Tomer - Global Cities Initiative Forum

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Adie Tomer

GCI Atlanta Roundtable: Atlanta’s Regional Export Plan

Amy Liu — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor’s Note: On March 19, 2013, as part of the Metro Atlanta convening of the Global Cities Initiative, Brookings’s Amy Liu, senior fellow and co-director of the Metropolitan Policy Program, led an introductory meeting for targeted stakeholders to develop and implement an Atlanta Regional Export Plan, an initiative that was formally announced by Mayor Kasim Reed at the GCI Atlanta forum the following day.

Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program - Global Cities Initiative Export Roundtable - Atlanta, GA from Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program

Authors

Amy Liu

Economic Improvement Nudges U.S. Migration to Normal

William H. Frey — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

New Census Bureau population estimates for the second full year after the 2010 Census show something resembling “normal” population shifts after five years of recession-induced anomaly. During that period, we witnessed a downsized exodus from traditional out-migration areas, mostly in the North, and similarly suppressed in-flows to previously fast-growing Sun Belt areas. A host of factors, including lack of jobs and mortgage financing in the wake of the Great Recession, brought national migration rates down to post-war lows, essentially freezing people in place. Immigration levels were down as well.

But an analysis of the new numbers for the period of July 2011 to July 2012 implies that the migration log jam maybe coming to an end, especially for large metropolitan areas. As a group, such areas in the South and West showed a growth uptick, a year after registering their lowest growth rate in decades. They also received their biggest domestic in-migration since 2001. At the same time, large areas in the Northeast and Midwest saw their greatest migration losses since 2008, which is when their recession-related “migrant retention” started to emerge.

Each of the 20 fastest-growing metropolitan areas in 2011-2012 (among the top 100) were located in the South and West and most grew more rapidly than in the previous year—including Charleston, Orlando, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Similarly, each of the 20 slowest growing or declining areas were located in the Northeast and Midwest, including Youngstown, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis, most of which grew more slowly in the past year. So after a five-year hiatus, Snow Belt/Sun Belt growth trajectories are, once again, heading in opposite directions.

An examination of the domestic migration patterns provides further emphasis, with some surprises (See map below). Here, each of the 2011-2012 top gainers showed higher levels of migration than in 2010-2011. Not unexpectedly, Dallas and Houston rank first and second, with Austin and San Antonio not far behind. These Texas areas were migration draws, even during the recent down period, as they were not as severely affected by national housing and job market ills.

Yet the rise of Phoenix, as it were, to become the third-biggest migration gainer is of special note, given its plunge in the post-housing bubble years (See Figure 1 below). Similar turnarounds are evident in Las Vegas, which experienced net out-migration over the prior three years, and Atlanta, Orlando, Cape Coral, and Jacksonville, among others, each showing in-migration levels not seen since at least 2008.

At the other extreme, migration losses were especially noteworthy in Northeastern metropolitan areas, New York, Philadelphia, Hartford, Syracuse, as well as a slew of smaller metropolitan areas in New England and Upstate New York. In each case, the losses exceeded those of the previous year and seemed to put an end to their recession-era migrant retention. Chicago also experienced reduced out-migration or migration retention over the 2007-2010 period, but began show increased out-movement a year ahead of some others. Los Angeles has long been a Sun Belt outlier, feeding migrants to the rest of the West.

Immigration levels also took a hit over the past five years, in part, due to the same causes: a poor economy in general and a lack of jobs in construction and other immigrant employing industries. But those numbers are also starting to rise—approaching 1 million annually. This may prove timely for older areas starting to lose their hold on domestic migrants by providing an “immigrant cushion.” The new Census estimates show that each of the 100 largest metropolitan areas received more immigrants in 2011-2012 than in 2010-2011.

There is still one area that has not yet reached “normal” expectations, according to the new data: migration to the nation’s outer suburbs. According to a Brookings framework used in previous studies, outer exurban counties are experiencing a net out-migration for the second year in a row and another set of counties classed as “emerging suburbs” continue to grow tepidly, well below earlier years.

Nonetheless, the new Census population estimates make a compelling case that, for better or worse, traditional cross-regional migration patterns are returning. Of course, this turning point is a precarious one because it is dependent on the availability of jobs and a further improvement in the economy. Lets cross our fingers and hope it continues.

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Authors

William H. Frey