In Utah, where the million-person Salt Lake metro area ranks 45th nationwide, that means treating the region as one economic engine with a shared vision for quality of life and efficiency. Current federal policies shower funding across towns and cities that were distinct when first incorporated but have since melded into the larger urban mosaic.
Yet, the old, competitive model persists. And such battles for infrastructure funding and housing construction spread humanity increasingly and inefficiently thin, bogging down the 100 metros that drive 80 percent of the nation's economic output, according to the Blueprint for American Prosperity campaign that the group launched this week.
"Our nation's ability to grow and prosper and meet the great social and environmental challenges of our time is at risk unless these metropolitan engines of national prosperity are healthy and vital," Brookings Vice President Bruce Katz said in introducing the yearlong campaign timed to the presidential election.
If the government keeps throwing money at city-edge roads and sewers that help push homes and jobs from the urban core, metro areas will become less enticing to skilled workers and their industries will lose the edge they gain by clustering and sharing their labor pools, said Alan Berube, research director for Brookings.
"If you scatter everybody evenly over a plain, they're going to be less productive," Berube said. And many foreign commerce centers don't make that mistake.
At the same time, spread-out developments neglect the urban attractions and "quality places" with the historic or cultural significance that educated workers demand.
The numbers draw a clear picture of where American prosperity currently lives: 68 percent of the country's jobs are in the top 100 metros; 51 percent of Utah's are in the Salt Lake City area. But the government still doles out 95 percent of its transportation dollars through states that each answer to hundreds of smaller towns, and most metro areas lack the authority to direct their own growth across city limits. Intercity planning groups like the Wasatch Front Regional Council get a small fraction of the federal funding directly from Washington.
"We've got a government structure that dates from the horse-and-buggy era," said Keith Bartholomew, assistant professor with the University of Utah's Center for Architectural Study.
For instance, he said, state and federal policies and funding schemes put individual towns and cities in competition for infrastructure instead of funding regional plans. It made sense when few people ever crossed city limits in their work week, but now most people do so many times daily.
The government makes things worse by requiring that one pot be spent on roads, another on mass transit, and another on trails, regardless of local needs, he said.
As the Brookings Institution rolls out a series of reports between now and Election Day 2008, Berube said one of the recommendations will be to create more powerful metropolitan cooperative governments and allow them to determine their own priorities for federal funds. Others will include affordable housing and training for the urban - and suburban - underclass that's fast being left behind.
And it will argue that the hinterlands still rely on metro America's competitiveness.
Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce Vice President Natalie Gochnour said the campaign is right to link rural America's future to the cities. Urban Utah offers small towns a big market, an international airport, a supply of visitors and universities, she said. And Salt Lake City's corporate income taxes help pay for schools in Blanding and beyond.
"Everybody has a stake in the success of our capital city," she said.
And though the Salt Lake Valley is nothing if not sprawling, observers locally and nationally say there are signs it is well-positioned for the needed changes.
"I would suggest that we are investing big time in both roads and transit, and that investment is primarily locally driven [through sales taxes]," Gochnour said.
Envision Utah, a nonprofit that's often held out as a national example of smart-growth planning, will soon release a market analysis showing a pent-up demand for mixed commercial and residential neighborhoods at key transportation nodes. It could help communities offer Utahns the choices they want, executive director Alan Matheson said.
At least in one key area, Salt Lake has a head start on much of America, said Berube, the Brookings research director. A third of its jobs are within 3 miles of downtown. That's a figure more akin to New York than a Western city, and metros including Atlanta, Miami and Detroit have figures below 10 percent. It's a hint that efforts to revitalize the urban core might pay off more quickly here than elsewhere.
"It's a sort of built-in geographic advantage," Berube said.
bloomis@sltrib.com
HOW SALT LAKE METRO AREA RELATES TO THE STATE AS A WHOLE:
%
of Utah's population
51
of Utah's job market
57
of Utah's productivity
Vice president of the Brookings Institution, on the dangers of spreading the country's populace too thin and too distant from economic centers.
WITH MORE THAN a million people in the metropolitan area, Salt Lake City has more than 40 percent of Utah's population.
EMPLOYING 614,482 people, metro Salt Lake City's contains slightly more than half of the state's overall job market.
PRODUCING MORE THAN $50 billion worth of domestic product, the metro area's share of Utah's productivity is nearly 60 percent.
Growing pains
WITH MORE THAN a million people in the metropolitan area, Salt Lake City has more than 40 percent of Utah's population.
EMPLOYING 614,482 people, metro Salt Lake City's contains slightly more than half of the state's overall job market.
PRODUCING MORE THAN $50 billion worth of domestic product, the metro area's share of Utah's productivity is nearly 60 percent.
