As I listened to the dialogue at the Citistates Group’s Pocantico retreat in late October, I was impressed by the way the conversation about regional thinking and acting had shifted from structure to form, that is to say, from governmental fiat to organic growth. Here was a new paradigm!

Given the discouraging state of affairs at the federal and state levels of government, the creation of by the state legislatures of creative interjurisdictional mechanisms, or revised federal mandates, beyond what is already in place (MPOs and COGs, for example) is a pipe dream.

What then can stimulate real progress in affirming the reality, and recognizing the necessity, of regional cooperation? It’s the a focus on creating clusters of economic development opportunity. Clusters can grow organically, and do not need official action by government to happen. Harvard’s Michael Porter has famously described clusters as “geographically proximate groups of interconnected companies and associated institutions in a particular field, linked by commonalities and complementarities.”

Clusters we are familiar with, such as life sciences in Boston, tourism in Orlando, aerospace around Wichita, the Golden Triangle in Raleigh-Durham, NC, and Silicon Valley, all illustrate Porter’s point.

Economic development today must be a collaborative process, with companies, research and academic institutions working together to find out what is unique in their area and to create new companies, new start ups, new spinoffs. Government can be a facilitator, but not the driver, in this new model — simply because it involves the private and non-profit sectors more than the public sector, in its policies and incentives.

Consider the following two examples:

During the time I served as Mayor of Indianapolis, we had a Corporate Community Council (CCC) consisting of local CEOs plus the governor, the presidents of Indiana University and Purdue, and the mayor. But early in this century, corporate leaders realized that the entire Central Indiana area — Bloomington, Terre Haute, Lafayette, Muncie, Kokomo, Columbus and so on — was too dependent on large manufacturing companies whose high wages “masked underlying challenges in workforce and economic diversity.” Consequently, the business leaders came together and arranged for the old CCC to morph into the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership (CICP), including not only business leaders, but also leaders of higher education.

CICP commissioned Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, to study regional successes in establishing clusters. Out of that initiative, begun in 2001, emerged the CICP’s blueprint for economic progress. It focused on the key clusters of advanced manufacturing, the life sciences, distribution logistics, and information technology, with a strong emphasis on entrepreneurship and economic diversity. CICP’s president and CEO, Mark Miles, has defined its mission as: “educating, retraining and retaining the workforce; ensuring connectivity among and between organizations, sectors, clusters, and regions (both in the United States and globally); harnessing the region’s intellectual capital to create firms and jobs; encouraging an entrepreneurial climate for the growth and expansion of the clusters.”

To date, the most successful cluster fostered by CICP has been the BioCrossroads Life Sciences Initiative, founded with assistance from Eli Lilly & Co., Indiana University, Purdue University, the Indiana Health Industry Forum, and local government. $80 million was raised in venture capital, and over $2 billion in corporate and institutional investment has been attracted, all of which has led to new companies, new asset-based economic strategies, new life sciences research, and hundreds of new jobs.

A second example of how a cluster can be formed independently of government regulations and policies has developed around Geneva, Ohio in Ashtabula County. It is currently being driven by a group of students at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C., in a class called “City Lab” under the leadership of Associate Provost and Dean Robert L. Manuel.

The students were asked to develop a plan for the region’s “sustainable economic future.” In their study, they discerned several building blocks.

First and foremost was the SPIRE Institute in Geneva (a multi-sport, 750,000 sq. ft. facility that “exists to unlock the full potential of the human spirit through athletics, academics and service.” It was already in place in Geneva and debt free, thanks to the generosity of Ron and Tracy Clutter. Included in its mission statement is a section about helping people adapt to various mobility problems.

The second building block was the regional business plan of “Advance Northeast Ohio.” It emphasized the region’s strengths: precision manufacturing, material science, and chemical/mechanical engineering. The students noted that Ashtabula county is “the cradle of the reinforced fiberglass composite industry,” materials that could play a “major role in para-equipment and exo-skeletal research and development.”

The third building block was the proximity of 29 institutions of higher learning known for their achievements in scientific innovation and research—state universities, the Cleveland Clinic, Case Western Reserve, etc.

From this stockpile of assets, the students have come up with a unique idea; to wit, create an “adaptive community” in which those who have mobility issues caused by illness or injury can receive the equipment and training necessary to move toward “an active future.” The students note that currently, there is no economic cluster anywhere to serve the Adaptive Community, and believe that secondary benefits such as conferences, seminars, trade shows, and product launches could accrue in a cluster relevant to the needs of Special Olympians, Wounded Warriors, weekend warriors, and Paraolympians.

The cluster is not in place yet, but the students at Georgetown are driving this, and intend to persist with the idea, confident that the cluster will grow over time.

These two instances suggest a new model for organic regional growth independent of government structures, a smart way to go, don’t you think?

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An Indianapolis-area ex-CEO of a hospital group called me the other day — not about health care policy, but rather regional planning in central Indiana. He wasn’t interested in some way to force unified regional government — to expand the geographic scope of Indianapolis’ Unigov system, which Dick Lugar (now Indiana’s senior senator) founded in 1969-70 and I later led as mayor for 16 years. This ex-CEO’s concern was different: How do we get the region’s top players on the same page when it comes to such critical issues as land use, transportation and housing.

The call was heartening because it demonstrated to me how America’s business leaders are starting to grasp that in this new, mobile, wired age of ours, boundary lines are relatively meaningless and obsolete. And that some are willing to take the lead to create new ways of approaching regional problems–quite far ahead of most political leaders, I might add, who too often are little more than self-protecting institutionalists, or so rigidly ideological that pragmatism has fled them.

But the new light’s not just coming from business leaders. President Obama “gets it,” even though between understanding and implementation, between the cup and the lip, slips can occur and good ideas can die. But in remarks made to a delegation of the U.S. Conference of Mayors last week, the President talked about the importance of rebuilding and revitalizing our cities and metropolitan areas. This was not a point he made in his State of the Union address, having other pressing matters he had to deal with. But to the mayors he did outline his administration’s urban vision of creating “economically competitive, environmentally sustainable, opportunity rich communities that serve as the backbone for our long term growth and prosperity.”

The president outlined three important components of the strategy, which will be backed up with dollars in the new budget he presents in a few weeks. First, “build strong regional backbones for our economy by coordinating federal investment in economic and workforce development.” He pointed out that what’s good for a central city is also good for the region: “Today’s metropolitan areas don’t stop at downtown.” A strong Denver means a strong Aurora and Boulder in Colorado, he said. “Strong cities are the building blocks for strong regions, and strong regions are essential for a strong America.”

Second, the president talked of creating livable, sustainable communities through smart growth policies that discourage sprawl, congestion and pollution: “When it comes to development, it’s time to throw out old policies” that lead to sprawl and the isolation of communities from each other. “We need strategies that encourage smart development linked to quality transportation that bring our communities together.” And he pledged partnership between federal agencies (HUD, EPA and DOT) and cities so that “when it comes to development, housing, energy and transportation policies go hand in hand.” He commented to applause that “we will build on the successful TIGER (“transportation investment generating economic recovery”) discretionary grants to ‘put people to work and help our cities rebuild their roads, their bridges, train stations and water systems.’” (In the same week he announced his $8 billion federal high-speed rail grants–also a plus for connected metro areas.)

A third administration strategy, the president told the mayors, is to “create neighborhoods of opportunity.” He acknowledged that the causes of economic distress in many neighborhoods are “deeply rooted and complicated,” but he also spoke of “simple” things that could address neighborhood needs: “access to good jobs, affordable housing, convenient transportation that connects both, quality schools, health services, safe streets and parks, and access to a fresh, healthy food supply.”

I like that approach–encompassing, as it does, the “efficacy of the little good.” Because, truly, it is the “little” things that count, not so much big endeavors like a sports stadium or convention center (which I also believe in, and supported as mayor). The fact is there’s no magic bullet for urban revitalization. The best strategy is to mind the store well, to focus on the the basics—street lighting, sidewalks, trees, trails, corner grocery stores, pubs, police horse and/or bike patrols, newspaper stands, parks and green space, and on and on–that can make a neighborhood livable and sustainable. Combine those strategies with sensible and conserving regionalism, and you have a really powerful package.

So will the comprehensive, connected urbanism–the urban vision the president articulates–ever become reality? Will Congress and the American people support the urban vision and program? Some will say it’s too much, some say it’s not enough. Everyone wonders where the money will come from. But–if the urban initiatives the President Obama speaks of are supported in the new federal budget, the vision will be furthered, maybe historically. Let’s hope so.

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Somewhere between 350 and 400 Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) exist in the United States, and unless the rules get changed there may be 40 more after the next census.

So what are these beasts? Authorized by federal statute in 1962, MPOs are established by agreement of a governor and units of general-purpose local government. Their purpose is to bring together elected and appointed officials from different levels of government, plus (though it doesn’t happen often) civic leaders and professional planners, to create a “continuing, cooperative and comprehensive” planning process for the allocation of federal transportation dollars.

The Florida Transportation Plan (FTP) lays out the rationale for the creation of MPOs: “Increasingly, Florida’s economy is functioning at a regional scale as development spreads out from city centers and metropolitan areas grow together. The FTP identifies regional level coordination as critical to the process of making good decisions about transportation planning and programming.” So Florida has 26 MPOs.

In short, MPOs are ideally suited to the regional realities of today’s metropolitan areas and to the task of shaping future growth in multi-jurisdictional communities.

Except for one thing: they largely lack power to implement the transportation improvement plans (TIPs) they recommend. That’s why we can think of them as “sleeping giants.” They can propose, but not dispose. They can veto federally funded projects allocated under state plans, but not rewrite them. So they have few if any teeth. They are good for jawboning and horse-trading amongst a selected group of interested officials, but they have difficulty walking their talk. Their job is to coordinate, not operate. They lack clout, and are not given the power to enforce the plans they recommend to city or county councils or the state legislature.

Of course, every MPO loyalist who reads this will think his or her MPO is an exception to the rule. And certainly, we must recognize that influential, strong MPOs exist. Among them are SACOG in the Sacramento valley, which developed a “Blueprint” for growth; the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission which adopted a FY2009-FY2012 TIP for New Jersey and Pennsylvania that includes more than 600 projects and totals more than $5.5 billion; METRO in Portland, Ore., and the Metropolitan Council in the Twin Cities area. In San Diego County, SANDAG will allocate $14 billion of new sales tax revenues for transportation improvements.

Efforts have been made at the federal level to strengthen MPOs. Every six years (or so), Congress sets the country’s transportation and infrastructure priorities–allocating billions of dollars for projects that shape our communities for generations. ISTEA (the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act) came along in 1991, followed in 1998 by TEA-21, and SAFETEA-LU (Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users) in 2005.

And now, in what needs to be the fourth modern-day iteration of Congressional legislation on transportation and infrastructure, action has been postponed for 18 months in favor of simply extending current legislation. The White House is calling this “the first stage of surface transportation reauthorization, consisting of an 18-month plan to address the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) shortfall and implement discrete, leading-edge capacity-building measures that a long-term reauthorization should expand upon.” That $20 billion shortfall will have to be funded, or the HTF will go broke. The Administration is also proposing $300 million of funding to help states and MPOs build evaluation capacity for collection and analysis of data on transportation goals.

But most of this seems to be tinkering around the edges, rather than promoting systemic MPO reform. Recommend; evaluate; coordinate; assess: few teeth there. Here are a few suggestions to wake up the sleeping giants:

Elect the membership. Elected officials and agency staff could be excepted; they would serve ex-officio. But let all eligible voters have the opportunity to vote on citizen members in any number chosen as long as it exceeds the number of ex-officio members.

Give MPOs actual authority to zone land, allocate funds, issue bonds, levy taxes, and enforce federal and state regulations regarding clean air and water.

Require MPOs to focus on GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions as a planning issue, since lower densities generate a larger carbon footprint than higher ones. And not only that: federal law should require that the TIPs comply with results-based goals for climate stability, furthering national energy independence and clean energy goals.

Require neighboring regions to link their planning through a uniform approach to presenting information and benchmarking results. And require, indeed, that there only be a single MPO for a single metro region–Many are now all split up, with predictably minimal coordination.

Develop multimodal regional access plans, establish local transportation governance standards and best practices, and fund approved multimodal access plans (as recommended by the White House).

Mandate a “fix it first” strategy for MPOs, which is to say, rebuild the old before building the new.

So, a few ideas. Any takers?

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OK, what’s the connection–the climate change afflicting our globe and the man some call baseball’s greatest player of all time?

With a new baseball season opening, it’s also good season to ask that question.

For a powerful hitter, climate change is the natural world’s equivalent. Most of us have heard how rising sea levels and surges generated by more intense storms will cause flooding of roads, railways, transit systems, and airport runways in coastal areas. Increased rainfall will create severe flooding on transportation routes in Midwestern farmlands and towns. Heat waves can potentially increase wildfires in the Southwest that could destroy transportation infrastructure. Drier conditions in watersheds around the Great Lakes might reduce shipping capacity, strand barges on our great rivers, and diminish freight movement along the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Ohio/Missouri/Mississippi Riverways.

Even in the games we play and the sports we watch, it seems that climate change will have an effect. It has become so hot in Texas that the two-a-day high school football practices in August have been turned into one-at-night, and so steamy in Florida that the Miami Dolphins have built a climate-controlled practice bubble instead of sweating out their football players on an open field. It is projected that in 2025, the ski resort in Taos, New Mexico, will lose 23 days of business for lack of snow, a number that will increase to 48 by 2050. Major league baseball bats are customarily made from ash wood that grows from eastern Pennsylvania to the Adirondacks in New York, but the quality of the ash is being threatened by two things: a warmer climate, and the arrival of a tiny destructive beetle known as the emerald ash borer.

So this brings us to Willie Mays, the immortal (and–at 77–still living) legendary center fielder for the Giants. An incident in his storied career illustrates how climate change effects even baseball, because baseballs fly through the atmosphere slower when it’s cooler, faster when it’s warmer. In Game One of the 1954 World Series in New York, a Cleveland Indian, Vic Wertz, hit a 460-foot blast that would have been a home run in any other ball park. But the old Polo Grounds had a huge centerfield, and speedy Willie Mays made a magnificent play on the ball. He ran it down, caught it over his shoulder, and secured his fame forever as one of the greatest players of all time. On that day, the temperature was 76 degrees. But since that time, the earth is on average 1.17 percent warmer, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That being the case, a University of Illinois physicist, Alan Nathan, has calculated that if the temperature were 77 degrees, the ball would have traveled “two inches farther in the less-dense air,” and thus might have glanced off Willie Mays’s glove instead of being caught.

Sports are adapting to climate change, however. Sports Illustrated has noted: “At a time when so much in our lives is linear and digital, from the economy to technology, sports still run in graceful cycles, marking time in rhythm with the seasons.” The magazine points to several positive steps that are being taken to combine environmental conservation with recreation. The Natural Resources Defense Council is working with the NBA and MLB to help their teams get greener. The Formula One circuit is using hybrids and biofuels, and Indy cars are mixing ethanol into their fuel tanks. The men’s lacrosse team at Middlebury College raised money to purchase renewable energy credits through wind power, to offset their carbon footprint. Golf courses can replace synthetic fertilizers with organic products, plant trees that turn carbon into oxygen, make water hazards hospitable to aquatic habitats, and serve as testing grounds for carts powered by newly developed fuels such as hydrogen cells and biodiesel. And new baseball stadiums, like the ones in New York City and Washington, D.C., have been sited near public-transit lines to reduce vehicle miles traveled and the baneful blight of asphalt parking lots. New stadiums can use water filtration and recirculation systems, harness wind and solar power off the rooftops, and incorporate parks into the design.

So when we’re told we all need a new ethic of conservation, what’s different? You’ve heard the batting order already: green infrastructure, green buildings, energy efficiency, LEED standards and certification, protection of habitat and open space, compact development, greater use of transit. We know those and countless companion steps spell our future. Because one lesson we can learn from our passion for a sporting culture is that we must not only cheer and watch, we must be players as well. Right now that means a long-term fight to save our environment and our quality of life.

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In a column last July, my Citistates colleague Neal Peirce succinctly described federal housing policy as “a real mess.” Given the financial turmoil of the last two months, it’s accurate to say that the entire housing situation in the U.S. has slipped from bad to worse, with even the most optimistic industry analysts predicting little relief until 2010.

Yet even as mortgage delinquencies and defaults and home foreclosures soar, some stars of exception dot the sky. One especially bright one is Enterprise, the nationally acclaimed affordable housing investment and development organization formed in 1982 by legendary developer and community builder James Rouse.

Enterprise has persevered throughout bad times and good ones, raising more than $9 billion in private capital for the production of nearly 250,000 homes. The majority have been for people making no more than 60 percent of the median income for their communities.

The sterling track record is due, in no small part, to the leadership of F. Barton Harvey III, who retired as chairman of Enterprise last spring after a 24-year stint as a self-described “investment banker for the poor.” Under Harvey’s guidance, Enterprise’s impact grew from $200 million annually (enabling 5,000 units per year) to more than $1 billion raised and invested annually (creating 20,000-plus units a year).

Enterprise’s big strides in filling the nation’s affordable housing gap–economic crisis notwithstanding–has just earned it a prestigious award. Harvey and Enterprise are recipients of the 2008 Urban Land Institute J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. The $100,000 prize–ULI’s highest honor–recognizes longstanding dedication to responsible development.

While most Enterprise units are rentals, the owner-occupied homes it has developed or financed tend to have low turnover rates and low mortgage foreclosure rates. Prospective buyers must complete comprehensive homeownership preparation and counseling training–a far cry, the ULI notes in its October edition of Urban Land, from the lax lending practices that fueled the subprime loan frenzy and subsequent mortgage meltdown.

As an example, a 2007 analysis of an Enterprise-administered mortgage assistance program in Dallas found the foreclosure rate for homes purchased through the program to be far below the rate for all subprime conventional loans in Texas. The study, by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, found that households using the Enterprise program “are not as likely to purchase homes that are too expensive in relation to income.”

Says Deborah Hammond, a 13-year resident of Baltimore’s Sandtown neighborhood, the first major community rehabilitation tackled by Enterprise: “This is my home, and I don’t have to worry about losing it. I did not buy more than I could afford.”

In all, Enterprise has brought the power of community pride to 17 metro regions across the U.S. Harvey points to the multiple benefits generated by providing safe, fit, affordable housing that is integrated into the greater community: “When people have a stake in the community, they want to see better things happen. They fight for better schools, they look out for their neighbors. The people in our communities are rooted.”

Enterprise is, to be sure, not the only non-profit with a sterling record in helping new homeowners qualify–and keep–their new residences based on underwriting loans properly and offering homebuyers financial counseling so they fully understand the terms to which they are committing.

Another champion of housing ownership that really works for people has been the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). Formed in 1980 by Michael Sviridoff of the Ford Foundation, it became and remains a major champion of community-wide redevelopment across America’s cities.

LISC played a major role in the New York City Marketplace Plan, designed to help low and moderate income New Yorkers buy their own homes in the city. More than 17,000 families take advantage of the program, with as astoundingly low five mortgages ever ending up in foreclosure.

The housing non-profits were among the advocacy groups that rallied for key measures in the federal housing legislation enacted last summer to assist homeowners facing foreclosure, help financial institutions stuck with bad loans and foreclosed properties, and help communities in acquiring foreclosed homes and placing them back on the market.

“I look at this housing legislation very positively, but it may be only the first step in stabilizing the housing market,” Harvey said. “It’s time for the government to intervene in a prudent way to keep people in housing.”

One affordable housing myth effectively dispelled by Enterprise, LISC and their companion non-profits is that their style of development is uneconomical, risky and should be considered a charitable write-off. Time and time again, they’ve proven that’s patently untrue.

In Harvey’s words: “If we can provide a platform that is more nourishing,” he said, “and which helps more people to succeed, then that translates into a more productive society.”

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Just 20 years ago, as Michael Dukakis and George Bush were preparing their acceptance speeches for their respective nominating conventions, two mayors– one a Democrat from Seattle, the other a Republican from Indianapolis– sat down together in Washington to write a document entitled “Hometown America.”

Both writers had served as president of the National League of Cities. Together, they had undertaken a year-long, bipartisan fact-finding tour of the nation’s cities and towns.

And their message was straightforward. The presidential candidates should discuss local issues in their campaigns, because these issues were central and critical not only to America’s strength at home but also to our competitiveness in the world.

The mayors had heard elected officials all around the country call for investment in three critical building blocks of a strong and healthy nation: our children, our jobs and economic competitiveness, and our communities.

“Hometown America” was based on those findings. It called on the federal government to invest in our future, and suggested ten priority issues to be debated in the 1988 campaign.

Sadly, these issues are just as relevant, pressing, and unresolved today as they were in 1988.

But we believe they are even more relevant today, and very much worth noting. Each point was posed in the form of a question to both candidates for president– Namely, what should the federal government do about

– increasing our nation’s investment in education?

– reducing poverty, which is growing everywhere?

– reducing the use of illegal drugs, which is costing us $100 billion a year in health care, lost production, and drug related crime and violence?

– improving the safety of our people, some 6 million of which are victims each year of some form of violent crime?

– helping at-risk children by reducing infant mortality rates, giving more attention to problems of child neglect and abuse, and averting teen-age pregnancies?

– meeting the challenges of a changing job market and the need for new skills in the New Economy?

– developing a national infrastructure plan and a first class transportation network, so essential to local and national economic growth?

– achieving adequate, affordable housing for all Americans?

– solving the plight of homelessness, which is growing worse?

– reducing unfunded mandates on local governments?

Twenty years have passed and one has to wonder: Is our country in better shape than we were in 1988? Shouldn’t these issues still at the forefront of our nation’s domestic agenda?

We admit that 20 years ago we did not anticipate global warming. We were not yet aware of the deep divisions in our country over the treatment of illegal immigrants. We did not see the oncoming, life changing speed of the energy crisis, and we did not yet call our country the “Homeland” or have a Department of Homeland Security.

Nor did we anticipate the global economic context of the changed world in which our home towns must compete. Today, we need to realize and act on the fact that our communities–especially our metropolitan regions–not only exist in a global economy, but in fact are the nation’s front line in global competitiveness.

What we heard on our journey through Hometown America, and what we wrote down for Michael Dukakis and George Bush in 1988, still requires discussion as the 2008 presidential campaign enters the final weeks.

We are the two former mayors who appealed in 1988 for a focus on these issues. We believe this election must indeed still be about issues, because investing in our children, our economic competitiveness, and our infrastructure will go a long way toward keeping our country strong, secure, and competitive in the world.

Our national strength is in our roots, in Hometown America, today as it was in 1988.

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