Citistates: Cities and Suburbs
in the New World Economy

by Neal Peirce
Syndicated Columnist, Washington Post Writers Group

Presented November 5, 1996 at the National Building Museum as part of the Smart Growth Speakers Series

THANKS SO MUCH for the invitation to speak with you this election day. Sadly, the issues on which this series focuses -- smarter development of the metropolitan regions where 80 percent of Americans live, regional cohesion, sustainability -- have registered near zero attention in this fall's campaign. Yet those issues, from urban abandonment to senseless suburban sprawl, are high among those that will make the real difference in our lives in the years to come.

To me, the issue's quite straightforward. Across the nation and across the globe, the age of the citistate is upon us. Great metropolises and their allied communities not cities, not states, increasingly not even nation states have become the central competitors in the world marketplace. Worldwide, we see barriers of communications, trade, immigration falling. Here close to the Pentagon it's appropriate to note that the one activity nation states were perhaps best at -- amassing huge armies and preparing for war -- has faded in import with the end of the Cold War. In the new world, it's economics, not military power that matters the most.

My colleague Curtis Johnson and I have composed a definition we would like to get Random House or Webster's to accept. It would read this way --

Citiïstate -- n. -- A region consisting of one or more historic central cities surrounding by cities and towns which have a shared identification, function as a single zone for trade, commerce and communication, and are characterized by social, economic and environmental interdependence.
The Europeans understand this; indeed they freely describe their continent as a collection of increasingly powerful citistates, ranging from the Milan to Hamburg, Manchester to Stuttgart, Lyon to Marseilles -- all metropolitan regions making deals, establishing direct economic and cultural ties to each other with minimal regard for the nation states in which they happen to be located. And almost always on the basis of forms of regional collaboration that we consider political anathema.

I believe a fundamental global paradigm shift is occurring before our very eyes. In the old order, we looked overwhelmingly to the three familiar levels federal, state, and then local government for the lion's share of our answers. Here in Washington, we will always have a big share of the federal presence.

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But the most powerful new paradigm is different: it is global, regional, and neighborhood:

Global because critical impacts are worldwide global warming, for example, but also worldwide economic restructuring as it tears
apart our comfortable relationships.

Regional, because metropolitan regions -- what I call citistates -- are the true cities of our time. They are the real labor markets, the functioning economic communities, the commute-sheds, the environmental basins. Goods, services, transportation, media broadcasts, crime, medical services -- name what you like, they're all really regional. And it's the success of the regional system, on every measure from workforce preparedness to the quality of the infrastructure, that determines how competitive and successful the region will be for all its citizens in the long run.

Finally, the new paradigm is neighborhood, because local community is the arena in which America's grave and growing social problems must ultimately be dealt with. And to look within neighborhoods to build strength, economic and civic, using the cooperative skills of their people.

A major consequence is that we must learn, as citistate regions, to take command of our own social, economic and environmental fortunes. The sad reality is that on issue after issue, we the people of the Washington citistate are finding ourselves more victims than actors, more acted upon than deciding. There have been exceptions. We managed to cooperate to put our Metro system together. We have acted with some unity and intelligence to modernize our airports.

But against that, consider this: We have no region-wide citizen organization to watch for our interests. When our Council of Governments gave birth to a Partnership for Regional Excellence, our local media yawned and virtually blanked out coverage of its existence, much less its recommendations. The same lack of public attention befell a splendidly imaginative plan for integrating transportation and development, produced three years ago by the Washington Regional Network for Livable Communities. When the big Laurel and Disney issues surfaced, it was as if the vision of that study had never existed.

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One can argue that Washington's personality is tragically flawed, making collaboration ultra-difficult: A sleepy, Southern capital city earlier in this century, it became influential and powerful playing power politics and gathering in other folks' tax money. We don't specialize in unified visions; we specialize in raw political infighting, with thousands of political operatives, special interest groups, law and public relations firms to keep up the drumbeat.

What this produces is "a zero-sum game." As Bruce Adams, former president of the Montgomery County Council put it in a recent speech at the Smithsonian -- If the suburbs win, the District loses. If Fairfax County wins, Montgomery County loses. The region revels in this "tired old interest group model of parochial politics" even as other areas start debating cooperative strategies.

On top of all that, charges Adams, "the drumbeat of negativism" from the Washington Post and the nightly television news "appears to have sapped our energy and destroyed our hope.î With its most powerful communicators stuck in an old paradigm, gridlock reigns and the region is left bereft of a 21st century vision.

In April I was in Hong Kong, where there is an integrated infrastructure improvement plan underway that includes building one of the world's largest airport on a new man-made island, connecting it to the center if Hong Kong some 18 miles away with a dazzling super-road and one of the world's greatest suspension bridges, with rapid rail running along the road and capable of delivering passengers into downtown Hong Kong in 23 minutes. With coordinated new port facilities, the bill for those infrastructure projects is $20 billion, some of it in fact financed in cooperation with the private sector. By the standards of Washington, such an investment, with Chinese takeover of Hong Kong looming in less than a year now, would be totally impossible. But the Hong Kong leadership has worked collaboratively to make that investment precisely in order to assure stability after British sovereignty ends. Already Hong Kong investment is responsible for a vast amount of the growth in southeast China -- investments flowing across what was supposed to have been a tightly guarded border. Hong Kong is the globe's most exquisite example of using economic means to overcome traditional nation state military power.

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And it is more than economic power. It is based on collaboration. There is a remarkable understanding among the leading business, civic, political leaders of Hong Kong that they share a common enterprise, that their fates are intertwined. The global press plays on the fact that many affluent Hong Kong people have a foot in some other country or place. It misses the model of powerful collaboration.

So what does make for a successful region in our times? Let me emphasize that no region, here or across the globe, is doing it all perfectly. I am shocked to get queries from Canada and Great Britain about American metropolitan development, as if it were any guide at all.

But there are some principles. A group of us have begun a project to identify the characteristics of American metropolitan regions that are starting to form the core of civic strength, a committed citizenry, the techniques that will give them cohesiveness, survivability in the century to come. We are led by John Gardner, the famed former Cabinet and our numbers include Bruce Adams whom I mentioned a moment ago, Harold McDougall of Catholic University, and former National Civic League president John Parr. Let me offer you just a sampling of the qualities we have been identifying, and consider for yourselves how well you think the Washington region stacks up.

The "tests," so to speak, begin with cross-group involvement and communication. Do the governmental leaders communicate, is there open exchange of ideas city to suburb to suburb, do the black and white and other racial or ethnic communities talk -- both group to group and person and person? Do people get out of their own "boxes" -- business talking with environmentalists, for example? And how are clashes among interest groups resolved -- by confrontation and litigation, or more often by looking for some common ground?

Are there deliberate ways to make public discussions happen? Has the region had a shared visioning effort? Are there town meetings, productive discussion channels? Are new ideas suppressed or brought forth and entertained? Are there public spaces -- where you can test out your ideas? Do the local governments encourage public discussion on major issues? Is the media a partner by experimenting with the new techniques of so-called public or civic journalism, creating a less adversarial and more solutions-based pattern of coverage?

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Next, is there attention to sustainability -- environmental and civic? Does the community go beyond one-shot leadership to building ongoing civic capacity? Here one can look to whether there's a sense of history of the community, with young people taught about the past and culture. Is there a culture of commitment to the place-- a legacy of trust? Is there a commitment to excellence in doing the public's business, today in such forms as experiments in reinvented government? Is this a community that embraces benchmarking -- setting goals on where it wants to go, then talking about barriers in getting there?

A fourth question is about leadership. Do civic or business or other leaders see themselves as responsible for advancing the region? Is there willingness to say there are things the community must learn in common? Or put another way -- Who can convene a meeting to which many people of many backgrounds will come? Is there a good supply of boundary people, with feet in more than one camp? Do civic leaders have a positive vision for the future, or are they just NIMBY?

Fifth, does the region have strong organizations for citizen leadership? Is there some form of region-wide citizens league, and if so, does it get support from business or community foundations? Indeed, strong local foundations, especially community foundations, play vital convening and support roles for successful communities. But the broader point here is the civic support networks-- networks of citizen organizations, community leadership organizations, volunteer centers in cities, and mechanisms for neighborhoods and suburban groups to all be part of the regional dialogue.

Finally, is there education to support building a mature, responsible citizenry? Do corporations train their folks in civic leadership? Is youth participation in public issues encouraged? Are colleges and universities deeply involved in community issues, in their core learning activities as well as public relations or building new edifices? Do the churches play a strong and clear role?

Admittedly, this is a hard-to-measure, inexact science. But it's vitally important. Washington and its Virginia and Maryland neighbors, instead of representing the dregs of regional cooperation and cohesion, we ought to aspire to the best in North America. We can do a great deal better, and in some places we as Americans do.

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Many of you will know the story of Portland, Oregon, where neighborhoods have consulted, brought in on city planning since the 1970s. Where statewide land use planning, and an urban growth boundary to control sprawl, have been in effect for a quarter century too. Where downtown deteriorating has not occurred. Where the recent effort to draw up a Portland 2040 Plan, to see how to accommodate 1 million more people in the next decade, involved extensive community workshops, thinking through of alternatives, finally a poll of over 500,000 households giving people real choices, real tradeoffs, on density, light rail lines, compact urban centers. The people know they belong to that city and region, because they've been consulted at every step.

And there are many other models. A couple of weeks ago I was in Cleveland, watching as a city leaders' group from St. Louis got briefed on how the city once called "the mistake by the lake" has almost miraculously transformed its downtown and now started to work, in earnest, at revitalizing entire poor neighborhoods like Hough. It is a distinctly regional effort. The Cleveland Foundation, almost $1 billion strong, is led by a regionally-based board. Cleveland Tomorrow, the CEOs leadership organization, not only pushes business expansion and flashy downtown projects but is taking responsibility for rebuilding efforts in troubled neighborhoods. A new organization deeply concerned about suburban sprawl has just been formed, with partners from Cleveland State University to the Citizens League of Greater Cleveland to the Roman Catholic Diocese.

Another model comes from Louisville. The Greater Louisville Economic Development Partnership has reached across the state line to Indiana for its support base. And Louisville has become a national pioneer in forging harmonious labor management relations and cutting-edge workplace cooperation and efficiency -- first in the auto industries, now in a broad range of industries. A town known as "Strike City" 15 to 20 years ago now recruits new firms on the basis of its extensive cooperative relationships between workers and managers. Constant skill improvement and re-education for workers is a big part of that. The same cooperative spirit has also made possible tax-base sharing between Louisville and surrounding Jefferson County.

What's vital, in my view, is that we start to redefine regionalism away from the idea it's duty, what suburbs owe the city, to the idea regionalism as opportunity for all people of a region. With the idea that a protected and treasured landscape, a more prepared workforce, less bitter divisions, will lead to the kind of place where people want to raise their children, locate their businesses, stick around for a lifetime.

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To get there, we need not just to talk of traditional values but focus forward with the newest technology. The Internet and World-Wide Web are bursting on the scene as what may be the most significant invention of the late 20th century. A project called Sustainable Seattle has regional measures covering the environment, resources, economy, youth and education, health and community. Seattle area citizens can go on the Internet to see what's happening on each of those benchmark indicators, across their region. Similar projects are starting to bubble up across the country. The Washington region should not let itself be outpaced.

Indeed, why not have regional web pages showing where the entire Washington citistate, city and suburbs as a single entity, stand on critical indicators of population, income, race and residence?

So if politics say we can't or shouldn't have a super-government for the Washington region, and that's surely the answer for years to come, we could arrange to create a virtual region on the Internet. The Web may in fact prove a way to leap over the barriers of parochial, divisive politics, to start generating regional citizenship, to get everyone from school and college classes to civic and business organizations to grasp regional issues and start thinking in regional, citistate terms. Eventually, some major regional decisions might be debated on a region's web pages how a major chunk of transportation monies should be allocated, for example. Our air quality issues. How we use and misuse our land, and possible remedies.

None of that means, though, that we need tolerate political leadership that callously turns its back on our city, our region.

Newt Gingrich, of all people, has offered some of the best commentary on this score. As he told a group of Washington Post editors a few weeks ago, Bob Dole should have posed this question to Bill Clinton in one of the presidential debates:

"Mr. President, for four years you have lived within a mile of poverty, drug addiction, violence, ignorance. For four years, your administration has shown no leadership. How can you explain this? Why have you neglected the nation's capital?"

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Gingrich has quite a point. While battered, pothole-ridden Washington slipped into fiscal chaos, while Marion Barry's return to the mayoralty made an ugly joke of home rule, while a congressionally-created financial control board has floundered, there's been overwhelming silence from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Notes columnist Mary McGrory: "Bill Clinton, who plunged into trying to straighten our Jerusalem, won't go near the District of Columbia, won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. It's a loser, all right. ... People might take him for a liberal if he tried to do something about it."

But let's assume Mr. Clinton gets re-elected today. Could he do better by us. I do believe so.

Indeed, we might begin by quoting President John F. Kennedy:

"More than any other city, more than any other region, the nation's capital should represent the finest in a living environment that America can plan and build."

In fact, a new nationwide "Metropolitan Economic Strategy" has been announced by the president's own Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Secretary Henry Cisneros sees it as a challenge strategy -- the federal government ready to collaborate with citistate regions whose leaders, city and suburban, come together to forge common plans for economic advancement, better transportation and human services and affordable housing.

President Clinton can and ought to lead to make the Washington region the premier model of the new strategy.

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Such an approach doesn't need to be -- indeed it shouldn't, politically can't be -- a hit on the federal treasury to finance incompetence and the political cronyism of a mayor who continues to resist basic change and stiffs the control board Congress created.

What it should be is a strategy for the entire Washington region -- Maryland and Virginia suburbs along with the District -- that is devised and supported by leaders in government, business and civic groups across the entire region.

The District, after all, is why the suburbs are there in the first place. A depressed, quarrelsome, inhospitable city will harm the entire region, make it less attractive for corporations and national and international organizations.

And problems are hitting the suburbs. Gang activity is causing alarm in Alexandria, Prince Georges and Montgomery Counties. The Metro bus system is in big fiscal trouble.

With population and jobs draining from the District and constant exurban growth, traffic on the Capital Beltway, the region's main artery, is projected to rise 50 percent by 2020. There's even talk of double-decking parts of that huge road, at inevitably staggering cost.

So is there a way out -- a potential set of short- and long-term recovery strategies people might coalesce around?

Well, here's my plan. I believe President Clinton should address business, civic leaders, mayors, county executives, members of Congress from across the region:

"Come together across the jurisdictions, races, class lines and sit down with my Cabinet and agency heads. Adopt a declaration of regional interdependence. Devise a plan to restore Washington's luster and make this region a competitor in the 21st century global marketplace."

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But how could the president assure a focused response in a region which -- except for himself -- has no common leader?

One scenario: he could appoint, to galvanize the effort, one or two Americans of unquestioned civic commitment and prestige.

Here are my two nominations: General Colin Powell (a resident of suburban Virginia) and retiring Sen. Bill Bradley (a Washington region resident through his 18 years in Congress).

If the call for regional debate, negotiated strategies and solutions came personally from those two individuals -- one Republican, one Democratic, one black, one white, both deeply respected -- it's hard to imagine any major camps boycotting the process.

As Speaker Gingrich told the Post editors: "This country wants to love its capital. This country wants to love the White House and love the Capitol building and it wants to visit the Smithsonian and it wants to be proud and it wants people from the Third World to come here and . . . be proud to see America."

I think that's right. As citizens, we need to organize across this region into the kind of broad Metropolitan Partnership people like Bruce Adams are advocating.

But a President has to lead, too. In multiple ways, it's time we all started conveying that message.

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