Metropolitan Pressure Points
by Mayor William A. Johnson, Jr.

Rochester, New York's mayor argues that it's time to abandon the myth of the self-sufficient municipality and focus on regional cooperation.

Unless we come up with regional mechanisms for dealing with our problems, we won't be able to maintain the quality of life we've come to expect at the value we want.

A HUD study of metropolitan regions found that where communities emphasized cooperation over competition within their regions, greater success in expanding economic prosperity and creating jobs was the result. In other words, when cities and suburbs work together they can expect more new investment, business expansion, and employment and income growth than when they act independently.

Empirical evidence also shows that suburbs which surround healthy cities stand a better chance of vitality than those that surround sprawled-out cities. These findings are not surprising. Modern businesses depend so much on coordinating decentralized activities that they often regard small, locally-competitive governments as a throwback to pre-global times. Today's businesses seek out locally-cooperative, globally-competitive regions for expansion or relocation. In other words, there is an intimate connection between regional economic development, regional land use planning, efficient local government, local quality of life, and corporate competitiveness in the global economy. ...

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