Reflections on Bruce Katz, 18 hours too late. | Feb 13th at 9:25am
The ideas in the room are a breath of fresh air after eight (or more) years of the only federal housing policy being the promotion of homeownership at any cost. Inclusionary zoning, the unification of land use and transportation planning at the federal level, making federal grants more flexible for metro areas that can bring down their carbon footprint, etc.
As Katz said, political jurisdictions are not markets. That is the problem in a nutshell, because the question I am left with is: “how?” Metropolitan level governance is non-existent in most of the major metropolitan areas. State government is one idea, but as John has said, this might not be the right level to be making the decisions.
The only idea I can come up with is to do what the Commerce Dept. did during the 1920s, which was to write the Standard Zoning Enabling Act, have state governments pass it, and help municipalities write the zoning code. HUD could have a standard process of making metro areas convert their metropolitan transportation councils into agencies with some real juice outside the existing local decision makers. This could be contingent on community block grant and other federal funding sources.
It just requires political will and leadership. Myron Orfield (someone familiar to this crowd) has described in Metropolitics how a political coalition can be formed to put such a program in place.
Michael Freedman-Schnapp is a candidate for a Masters in Urban Planning at NYU's Wagner School for Public Service. He is the Senior Policy Associate for the New York Industrial Retention Network, where he works on keeping blue-collar jobs in New York City and encouraging the growth of the local green economy.
John Petro on Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 9:40am
There is one form of metropolitan governance: Portland’s Metro. It is responsible for managing the urban growth boundary (another policy idea that wasn’t discussed yesterday that would limit sprawl), transportation planning, waste disposal planning, etc.
Another idea is to expand the role of Metropolitan Planning Organizations. These organizations work with the federal DOT on transportation priorities in metro regions.
Michael Freedman-Schnapp on Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 12:01pm
Yep. Other possible structures to look at include Miami-Dade County, which elects a Mayor and covers a full third of the south Florida megalopolis, or the revenue sharing done in the Twin Cities.