The book is organized through an introduction, four case studies, the creation of innovation districts, global trading networks or economic development, relationships among the federal government, states, and metropolitan areas, and five points guide to how policymakers, governors, or administrators can start off their own process. A- Case Studies 4 case studies are utilized by authors to demonstrate their opinion better on American metropolitan revolution. First of all, the authors use New York City as an example for the importance of innovation and of cooperative governance structures.
Innovation is related to technology and science according to authors. Universities are playing big part explaining cluster economy. As a result, Cornell campus project, New York City, researches demonstrate how cities will look in the future after tech and science cluster. Also, according to the book, even though real measure of success will not be apparent for years, the city and the NYCEDC believe that the Applied Sciences initiative is already paying off. Secondly, Denver case, on the other hand, includes four votes being a process of city from 1960s to today and regional economic development of metro city.
Four votes illustrate good relationship between urban city and suburbs over 45 years. Because the issues have been complicated for one metropolitan area, Denver city case is really good example of cooperation between center city and suburb cities to solve or mitigate their problems during this period. Creation of a new airport, fuels collaboration, declaring new regional sales tax, building a new rail transit system are such examples illustrating affirmative relationship in the city. Consequently, as far as I am concerned, Denver case is definitely a model for how metropolitan areas can and ought to work together.
Moreover, the book moves on with the case of Northeast OHIO (Cleveland) being about economic future of US. Even an economic shrink, massive building boom, happened in 1990s in Cleveland, it is time to redevelopment economy in this region. The main focus of this development was on creating an innovation cluster, involving local universities, government officials, nonprofit organizations, and community groups. Also, as I understand, manufacturing will be the first priority again in US in the future after redevelopment in Northeastern OHIO. As a result, this book is a good source to learn what how happened after 1990s in Northeastern OHIO.
On the other hand, Houston has been called neighborhood center because of big migration community, which often leads to crime and poverty. The book clearly illustrates that Houston has a big diversity such as race, poverty, or socioeconomic situation of people, and city governors has a skill to cope or fight to overcome the problems by using neighborhood centers. Neighborhood centers are providing necessary argument for migrants to make sure they have adequate social services. This case is significant to understand how these sort of programs helps cities to handle poverty reduction and social services development.
B- The Creation of Innovation Districts Innovation districts is the clusters of universities and local businesses, hospitals, museums, technology and manufacturing industries held together regionally. Innovation district remind me agglomeration economies that I have learned from urban economic class, which is explain why firms locate close to one another. There are two significant reason; Localization economies, firms in an industry cluster, and Urbanization economies: firms in different industries cluster.
Firms cluster has several benefit, such as, share intermediate inputs, share a labor pool, get better matches of workers and labor tasks, and share knowledge. In this aspect, collaboration of local governments has been significant for making a better cluster to cope with issues. For instance; during the book discussion section the example of Kansas City and Missouri were given to explain how the collaboration of cities are running smoothly. In addition, most people know the name of Cities instead of States is another reason to make clusters or innovation district.
For example, the name of Illinois is rarely known, however, the name of Chicago is known almost by everyone throughout the world. C- Global trading networks In this chapter, the book discusses the history of metropolitan areas economic development, and what it will look like in the future. It is clear there is a global economy entire the world, such as China, Russia, UK etc. It is necessary for US to keep up with global economy to make much profitable economy in metropolitan areas, also, making good relationship with foreign business and market owners will be helpful for US metropolitan revolution for the future.
Metros have become both the object and subject of the new trading system according to book, and some of the examples for trading networks linking metropolitan areas are Portland, Miami and Sao Paulo across the globe. D- Relationships Among the Federal Government, States, and Metropolitan Areas Even if the dual federalism, splitting power between federal and state government, is one of the be best option for US metropolitans, the relationship between federal, states, metropolitan areas and cities does not work very well in this century for organizations to trade globally.
Although the economy is global in 21st century, the locals or metropolitans have to wait for federal decision to trade with other countries and cities. Therefore, metropolitan areas need to be focus and organized to achieve their economic goals in global economy. The question is for metropolitan areas of US is why they have to wait for federal or state government, that is why there ought to be collaborative federalism in US for the metropolitan revolution. In this chapter, also, the book mentions metro deals by explaining benefits of metro deals for federal government, states and metropolitan areas.
For instance; cities can receive control of central government funds for transportation, housing, and apprenticeships that are normally dispersed by specialized agencies for projects designed at the national level. In addition, metro deals accept that reinventing entire systems, and they can help the federal and state governments begin to behave more like successful metropolitan networks.
E- Creating Your Own Revolution The five steps of the creating your own revolution are; 1. Build your network. 2. Set your vision. 3. Identify and implement game changing initiatives. 4. Bankroll the revolution. 5. Sustain the gain. And then discusses elements necessary to spreading the concept across metropolitan areas. To sum up of the summary, this book is a really significant document for metropolitan leaderships to act as one and solve the metro areas problems to create a better future for current and next generation. If we would like to understand metropolitan revolution from beginning to future, we need to read this book, and analysis what the authors trying to say about this revolution.
