|
|
 |
Michigan
Editorial: Great Lakes States Need Joint Strategy to Transition from Industrial to ''Knowledge'' Economy
As the Washington-based Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program continues its 2005 multi-partner Great Lakes Economic Initiative (GLEI) to advance the region's transition from the industrial to the new knowledge economy, Detroit Free Press editorial page editor Ron Dzwonkowski points out in the wake of an unprecedented regional meeting of business leaders in Dearborn that their ''Big Ten'' states need a joint readjustment strategy like the one 13 Southern governors initiated in 1971 by forming the Southern Growth Policies Board in the university-dominated Research Triangle Park district of Durham, North Carolina.
Focused on research and practice for ''strengthening the South's economy and creating the highest possible quality of life,'' the editor reports, the nonprofit board helped government, academic and business leaders create policies and public-private partnerships turn ''the Old South, a rural, undereducated region with harsh racial history and a lazy reputation, into the booming New South,'' attracting scores of employers, boosting education, and fighting poverty.
''There is no reason why the Great Lakes Region, facing many of the same issues that confronted the South midway through the last century, could not embark on a similar regional strategy to reshape and remarket the region,'' he stresses. ''In fact, that may be the only way for this old, industrial area to ever shed its 'Rust Belt' moniker and avoid becoming America's economic backwater, a place where movie companies come to shoot stories requiring a post-apocalyptic landscape.''
Urging the move toward regionalism, the editor quotes Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program Deputy Director Amy Liu, a keynote speaker at the Dearborn meeting, held by the Detroit Regional Chamber.
''Innovation, infrastructure, human capital and quality places are the four things you leverage,'' she said. You build a strategy around them. Inherently, that's concentrated in your metropolitan areas.''
Read more at the following links: GLEI, Southern Growth Policies Board, and the Detroit Regional Chamber. -- Free Press 2/17/2008
Click here to view the source article or
here to view the source publication.
|
|
E-mail
to a Friend
View
Printer-friendly page 
