Today, often without even realizing it, four out of five Americans have moved into a new kind of home - metropolitan areas. And it looks more and more likely that, twenty years from now, those numbers will be closer to nine out of ten. America has had cities and suburbs for more than a hundred years. What's new about today's metropolitan areas is that, whether we wish it so or not, within each new metropolitan area the economies, the social problems, the environments - the destinies - of all cities and suburbs are tightly linked. They need each other to prosper, and by themselves they can't solve either the problems we already know about or those that the 21st century will inevitably dump in our laps.

There are 273 of these new home bases in the country, and they occupy between five and ten percent of the American landscape. They're oversized, often blob-like - many of them a hundred, or over two hundred, miles wide, and still getting bigger, usually pushing outward at a rate of five miles or more every ten years. They never quite existed before and haven't popped up yet on road maps. They'll probably endure for at least a hundred years - because they are at once our principal economic engines (they already generate 83% of America's income) and the basic building blocks of the new global economy.
- Tony Hiss

The Metropolitan Initiative is an effort to help community, civic and business leadership in metropolitan regions achieve collective goals for the betterment of their regions. It parallels the work of the President's Council on Sustainable Development which also has encouraged innovation in the relationship between metropolitan areas and the federal government.

The intention of The Metropolitan Initiative is to recraft the relationships between the federal government, states and metropolitan areas around three themes:

• Smart Citizens: Empowerment of local citizens through better access to more useful information.
• Smart Money: More creative use of existing federal expenditures, which represent 15-20% of regional economies.
• Smart Rules: Encouragement of locally appropriate and locally determined solutions to regional problems.

• Research and analysis on innovations in metropolitan cooperation and the federal role in supporting metropolitan cooperation;
• Regional forums in 12 metropolitan areas around the country;
• A national meeting of regional participants tentatively set for July, 1997, to frame the recommendations to the federal government.

What might enterprising regions organized around Smart Citizens, Smart Money and Smart Rules look like? Here are three examples which embody the spirit of The Metropolitan Initiative:

• Faced with investing $7 billion in conventional water treatment technology to correct for the agricultural contamination of its upstate watershed, New York City instead formed a partnership with the watershed's farmers to improve their agricultural practices at a cost of $1 billion. In this win-win solution, New York City avoids a $6 billion capital investment while farmers secure financing to upgrade their operations.
• A consortium of organizations is creating a new mortgage product, the Location Efficient Mortgage, which converts the savings from not needing to own or use a car into a larger mortgage. The LEM uses creative "score keeping" relying on public databases to quantify the geographic benefits of urban density and transit and pedestrian access. In proposed pilot programs in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, first-time homeowners could qualify for up to $35,000 more "house" for the same family income because they live near public transit.
• The 3M company has proposed that their Chicago tape factory stop filing paper environmental permits in exchange for reporting actual plant conditions on the Internet - to regulators and to the public. It also anticipates earning emissions reduction credits from aggressive plant improvements, selling these within the region to companies that need the credits for expansion and donating the proceeds to a new operating foundation for community environmental improvements. A similar program has been carried out at 3M's plant in Ventura County, CA.

Each of these initiatives combines access to information and creative regulation to strengthen the local economy. Each requires a cooperative relationship between local, state and federal officials.

The Metropolitan Initiative will crystallize its findings and recommendations in a menu of options for the Administration to establish a more productive relationship between metropolitan areas and the federal government. These recommendations could very likely include a proposal to create a pilot program in a limited number (6-12) of metropolitan regions."

This pilot program might be implemented through a Presidential Executive Order on Metropolitan Cooperation.

Each region would define its own unique agenda for regional cooperation which would be embodied in a "metropolitan compact" between the parties. These regional pilot programs might include:

• Designating a federal interagency coordinating mechanism, such as the Clinton Administration's Community Empowerment Board, to facilitate direct federal relationships with metropolitan regions;
• Focusing federal information and technology transfer programs on targeted metropolitan regions;
• Providing regulatory flexibility when it produces superior environmental performance and community benefits;
• Targeting existing federal expenditures to meet regional priorities, including the use of innovative procurement procedures and financing partnerships.

The Metropolitan Initiative is a partnership between national foundations and the Center for Neighborhood Technology.

The Center for Neighborhood Technology is a 19-year-old Chicago non-profit organization which promotes healthy communities which have a clean, livable, sustainable environment, empowered residents and institutions, and a local economy with good paying jobs. The Center's work is grounded in Chicago - its neighborhoods and metropolitan area - but includes extensive engagement in national policy issues.

Foundation leadership is provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, the Bank of America Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the George Gund Foundation and the Heinz Endowments.

The Metropolitan Initiative: Connecting Local Initiatives, Markets and Federal Authority to Sustain Mutual Gain, Continuous Improvement Partnerships
Current Administration Goals and Priorities: "Knowledge Creation, Smart Rules & Smart Money" = Balanced Budget, Lifelong Learning, Welfare Reform, ISTEA Reauthorization PCSD, Brownfields, Trade/Ports, Performance/Reinvention EZ/EC, EPA Initiatives, NII
Innovations in Metropolitan Cooperation ...Inventory Best Metro Practices Julia Parzen	The Federal Role in Metropolitan Cooperation ...Inventory Federal Authority Clem Dinsmore	Toward an Alternative Economics for the Metropolitan Chicago Region ...Inventory Market Incentives Stephen A. Perkins & Scott Bernstein
Outlining the New Metropolitan Initiative ...Development Scenario for Federal Initiative Tony Hiss
Test & Improve Scenario in Regional Forums Completed: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Francisco, South Florida, Twin Cities
Washington DC Strategy Session November 12, 1997 Bringing Together Regional Forum Representatives, PCSD, Federal Agencies, Executive Offices
Disseminate Report	Recommendations to Vice President and President	Conference

Research and Analysis:

Outlining The New Metropolitan Initiative
By Tony Hiss

Innovations in Metropolitan Cooperation
by Julia Parzen

The Federal Role in Metropolitan Cooperation
by Clement Dinsmore

Toward an Alternative Economics for the Metropolitan Chicago Region
by Stephen A Perkins Ph.D. and Scott Bernstein

Metropolitan Initiative Database

Regional Forums:

For more information:

Contact Stephen A. Perkins, Ph.D.,
Center for Neighborhood Technology,
2125 West North Avenue, Chicago, IL 60647
(773) 278-4800, fax (773) 278-3840
e-mail steve@cnt.org

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