What others are saying about "Back to Prosperity: A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania." The Brookings Institution released Back to Prosperity: A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania on December 7, 2003.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
By Ed Blazina, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Bruce Katz, director of the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy http://www.brookings.edu/es/urban/urban.htm, presented his agency's stark report on development in Pennsylvania yesterday to more than 200 people at a breakfast meeting held by Sustainable Pittsburgh http://www.sustainablepittsburgh.org/.
In a 120-page report released Sunday, Katz's center concluded that Pennsylvania spends a disproportionate share of development money on outlying areas while abandoning established communities; loses too many college graduates to other states; has too many municipalities that do community planning separately rather than regionally; and has no organized vision of the state's future. The state is among the slowest growing in the country, Katz said, but it is second in the country in using new land for development...Ken Klothen, executive director of the Governor's Center for Local Government Services who was on a panel discussing the report, said the state's spending practices in the past have been "fractured and silly." Gov. Ed Rendell has proposed a $2 billion revitalization plan that calls for heavy spending on existing core communities, but it hasn't been approved by the state Legislature.
http://www.post-gazette.com/localnews/20031210brookings1210p5.as
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
By
Violet Law , Pittsburgh Tribune Review
The report, co-authored by Bruce Katz, found that a lack of strategic regional planning has wasted resources, promoted urban sprawl and drained people from the state's urban centers... Hirsh represents the city on the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, the main regional planning agency for nine counties in the region. One of the biggest obstacles to regional cooperation, she said, is the mentality that if Pittsburgh benefits, the rest of the region suffers. Some municipalities don't realize that everyone benefits by cooperating, she said... Klothen said his department has begun to devise strategies that would ensure more coherent development statewide. He said his agency has recently renewed an effort to draft state policies to govern land use across the state, but he acknowledged the difficulty in exerting greater state control over local governments.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/search/s_169160.html
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
By Ervin Dyer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
DUQ 90.5 FM is broadcasting Sustainable Pittsburgh's Champions of Sustainability lectures at 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. Sundays this month Here are the remaining broadcasts:
Dec. 14 -- Bruce Katz, director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution, on "Back to Prosperity: A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania."
Dec. 21 -- Manuel Pastor and Angela Glover Blackwell, "Building the Uncommon, Common Ground: Regional Alliances that Promote Equity and Prosperity." Pastor is the director of the Center for Justice, Tolerance and Community at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Blackwell is president of PolicyLink, a national research and advocacy group. They will explore issues related to economic growth, land use planning and development, and race and social justice.
Dec. 28 -- Neal Peirce, nationally syndicated columnist and author of "Citistates: How Urban America Can Prosper in a Competitive World," will speak to the Smart Growth Partnership of Westmoreland County on regionalism.
For more information, e-mail: mailto:info@sustainablepittsburgh.org.
Sunday,
December 07, 2003
By Ed Blazina, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pennsylvania is spending plenty of money on economic development, but it's spending it in the wrong places...The effect is that people have been encouraged to move into outlying areas and abandon urban and suburban centers. To counter that trend, Pennsylvania should reinvest in its older, established communities, the kinds of places where young adults want to live, or it won't be prepared to participate in the emerging global economy. Those are some of the conclusions of a yearlong, 120-page study released today by the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. The sweeping study, performed by urban center director Bruce Katz, is called "Back to Prosperity: A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania." Katz found that Pennsylvania ranked fifth in the nation in development spending per capita. But the state spends too much of that money to support expensive new development in outlying areas instead of reinvesting in older, established ones..."We should make it as easy to develop in the urban areas as it is in the greenfields. You can't build a competitive future by sprawling and abandoning.
"There are very few regions that have succeeded when they abandoned the core."...Caren Glotfelty, director of environmental programs at the Heinz Endowments, conceded some of the study's conclusions and recommendations might not be popular in some areas. But she said the foundations had begun working with organizations such as 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania and Sustainable Pittsburgh, which both encourage smart growth and economic development, to build a coalition of leaders to support changes in state policy and laws to allow reinvestment in established areas.
http://www.post-gazette.com/localnews/20031207brookings1207p1.asp
Tax breaks could boost reinvestment in old neighborhoods
Sunday,
December 07, 2003
Brian O'Neill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pennsylvania, we have a problem. We're gobbling and paving record amounts of land but we're not growing. Nearly all our oldest, most established communities are losing population. About the only places in metro Pittsburgh that grew substantially in the '90s did so because of massive state and federal transportation investments, but we can't build a new airport or Parkway North every decade. We'd go broke...The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy in Washington, D.C., took a long look at Pennsylvania and said essentially that. Wonk that I am, I read the entire 120-page report. It is substantially covered elsewhere on this page, but what intrigues me is its implication that a new coalition of interests should form.
"Neighborhood decline is weakening the cities, towns and older suburbs in which 58 percent of the state's residents live, and where many of its critical intellectual, health and business assets cluster." ...We spend hundreds of millions in state and federal highway dollars encouraging the choice to move out. A modest local tax break to encourage the choice to move in or stay in seems a small enough risk..."What do you want?" Katz asked. "Better paying jobs and properties that appreciate in value? If you want that, you better have reinvestment be a priority. If cities and boroughs collapse you're not going to build a healthy competitive region. It's just not going to happen."
http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/20031207brian1207p1.asp
Leadership can solve problems, URA's Birru says
Sunday,
December 07, 2003
By Ed Blazina, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Mulugetta Birru, executive director of Pittsburgh's Urban Redevelopment Authority who also teaches urban planning, wasn't surprised at a statewide study by the Brookings Institution that showed the Pittsburgh region was struggling even more than other parts of the state.
Birru said he strongly agreed with the study's conclusions that the state has spent its economic development money to encourage development in outlying areas at the expense of cities and older towns. The clearest sign of the results of that practice, he said, was the construction of Interstate 279 into the North Hills, which sharply increased development in northern Allegheny and southern Butler counties.
http://www.post-gazette.com/localnews/20031207pghside1207p2.asp
The view from outlying areas on Brookings study: Some agreement, some discord
Sunday,
December 07, 2003
By Ed Blazina, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The study, released today by the Brookings Institution, encourages the state to spend more money in established areas rather than developing new areas. The study claims that the state's spending plans encourage outward migration from established areas, leaving those areas with poor people, dwindling property values and little industry....Dallas Leonard, community development director in Westmoreland County's Penn Township, the fastest-growing community in the county, said his area also received little in the way of state funding. As far as he is concerned, that's how it should be.
"I would agree with the study. You're better off to rehabilitate a brownfield area than to spend money developing a new area," Leonard said. "I would say they should put as much money as they can into rebuilding the core areas."
http://www.post-gazette.com/localnews/200312072ndclassside1207p2.asp
Study: Region must unite
Sunday,
December 7, 2003
By Andrew Conte, Pittsburgh Tribune Review
Pittsburgh and its suburbs spend so much time fighting that the region has fallen behind more unified areas nationwide, a new study finds...As a result, the Pittsburgh area and Pennsylvania as a whole rank low in such attractive characteristics as job growth and high in unattractive ones such as population loss, according to the report by The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy in Washington, D.C. .."It's well timed because of the financial wall that Pennsylvania communities, particularly Pittsburgh, are up against," said Court Gould, director of Sustainable Pittsburgh, which is hosting the briefing. "This is an inducement to look deeply at the message that to be competitive in the new economy, we need to have a progressive form of government that is regional in nature."
The lack of strategic regional planning wastes resources, is inefficient and promotes sprawling development, the report found. It also can be a contributor to urban decline, population loss and a sluggish local economy. ...Local assets are being squandered because the Pittsburgh region lacks a coordinated growth strategy, the report finds. Without a plan, tax subsidies often lead growth out of urban centers, called sprawl, and communities fight over scarce resources...State subsidies have encouraged growth away from urban centers by giving developers tax breaks to develop farm land and green areas, the report found. Three state programs gave more money to newer communities outside Pittsburgh than to established ones.