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With the 2010 Census a little over a year away, the nation is at a critical juncture in its planning and preparation for the next decennial enumeration.

There is much at stake. Without a full count of the U.S. population, Congress and the administration will lack the accurate data necessary for reapportionment and redistricting, to make critical decisions about community services, and to distribute $300 billion in federal funds to state and local governments every year.

On March 18, the Brookings Institution and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) hosted a discussion on urgent and emerging issues affecting the coming census. Brookings Vice President and Director of Governance Studies Darrell West set the context on new political realities and how this weighs on the 2010 Census. The panelists, moderated by NPR’s Ron Elving, considered the capacity of the Census Bureau to effectively carry out the enumeration, including an examination of the funds provided in the economic stimulus plan and the Obama administration's budget for the 2010 Census.

The forum also explored the issues facing the Census Bureau as it prepares to implement its communications and outreach plan–a key element in meeting the challenge of reaching Latinos and other hard-to-count populations–with an emphasis on the impact of the nation's changing demographics and political climate. Brookings Fellow Andrew Reamer provided introductory and closing remarks.

After the program, panelists took questions from the audience. 

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• Politics, Policy and the 2010 Decennial Census

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It's almost that time: the once-a-decade-moment when the U.S. Census Bureau tries to determine the population.

Counting more than 300 million residents is a complex and costly operation (an estimated $14 billion), but the results yield the basis for how we apportion Congress, distribute more than $400 billion in federal funds and understand basic changes to the number and geographic distribution of U.S. residents.

The largest challenge that the Census Bureau faces is ensuring everyone is counted, regardless of where they live, who they live with and perhaps most controversially, regardless of whether they are authorized to live in the United States.

Most households will receive a census form by mail in mid-March to be filled out as of Census Day, April 1. First results of state counts for redistricting purposes must be delivered by December 31. The rest of the results will be released over a period of time that ends in 2013.

Filling out a census form is mandatory by law. The 2010 Census will have 10 basic questions for each household member, but it is viewed as a burdensome task by some, because they see the questions as too personal or the process too intrusive. Others distrust what the government will do with the information or fear that it may be used against them. Some are hampered by language barriers. Still others have more than one residence.

Every decade, the Census Bureau works hard to make sure everyone is counted once and only once. And it makes an extra effort to count those who have traditionally been hard to count: racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and the poor.

This coming census -- the largest count of the U.S. population with more immigrants and minorities than ever -- will be complicated further by the economic downturn and foreclosure crisis because many people are "doubling up" or otherwise living in temporary quarters.

The Census questionnaire asks for a count of all people who live and sleep in the household "most of the time," as of April 1, but not those who are living away at college or in the military or those who are living in a nursing home or who are in a jail, prison or detention facility. (They are counted separately from households.)

"Home" may have changed recently for those whose hardship leaves them little choice but to live with relatives or friends, however temporary that may be. "Home" for displaced residents of the Gulf Coast may be miles away from where they lived before the devastation that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita wrought in their communities.

"Home" for some immigrants is in U.S. communities even though they are not legally residing in the United States. And "home" may be in a prison or detention center in a state far away from the inmate's hometown residence.

These are the very residents that the Census will try hardest to enumerate this spring. Abutting the challenges of where to call home are the public debates surrounding them:

• Civil rights leaders, recognizing the unique context of the Gulf Coast region, are working hard to ensure an accurate local census. At the same time, other regional leaders would like to see displaced Gulf Coast residents counted where they lived before the storms.
  
  
• A coalition of African-American leaders is lobbying for inmates to be counted in their place of residence before imprisonment.
  
  
• A tug-of-war has ensued between Latino leaders on one side who are working to get an accurate count of the population regardless of legal status, and those on the other side who are advocating a census boycott by immigrants as a way to put pressure on Congress to move forward with federal immigration reform.
  
  
• A recent amendment introduced in the Senate would have delayed the implementation and hiked up the cost of the Census, had it passed. In an attempt to exclude the unauthorized population from the official count for congressional apportionment purposes, it would have required questions on citizenship and immigration status for each respondent. That data is not collected to encourage participation in the census. The senators missed the deadline by two years to make a change of that order of magnitude.

Given the demands and challenges, it is vital that we bear in mind the importance of achieving an accurate count and the economic, political and policy implications if we fail.

• Understanding our changing population: State and local data on age, race and ethnicity, household size and composition help communities with projections for school enrollment, housing, transportation and health care. Businesses use Census data for decisions about where to locate and for marketing purposes. Information from the census is used to prepare for emergency services, research changes and advocate for various causes.
  
  
• Distributing federal dollars geographically: More than $400 billion a year is at stake, federal funds that go to states and localities to build schools, hospitals, highways and fund programs such as Medicaid.
  
  
• Apportioning Congress: The redistricting and apportionment of Congressional seats is contingent on census results. This is the primary purpose of the Census as written into the U.S. Constitution. States and localities also use the data to redistrict; therefore it is in every state's interest to be accurately represented based on their residents.

One debate that has been resolved: Census 2010 will not use statistical sampling, as many Republican leaders have feared. Sampling has been proposed as one way to mitigate the undercount of minority populations, the majority of whom are assumed to vote Democratic. The U.S. Bureau of the Census does use sampling in its annual American Community Survey that collects more detailed data, including social, economic, and demographic characteristics.

The political and equity arguments will continue to surface as we head into Census 2010. Public officials, advocacy groups, and community organizations will need to work together with census officials to get the most out of what will be a difficult enumeration, but one that sets the stage for the next decade.

      

Every 10 years, we have to count people. At least that's what Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution says. It doesn't sound too complicated. But it is. Who gets counted, and how, determines not only congressional representation but how funding is distributed for a slew of federal programs that affect all of us. As we prepare to stand and be counted in 2010 -- and the U.S. Census Bureau is spending a lot of advertising money to make sure that everyone is -- let's note a few misconceptions about our population and the efforts to tally us up.

1. Immigration is the biggest force behind the nation's racial and ethnic diversity.

If immigration stopped today, we would still see substantial gains in our minority populations for decades to come. Recent Census Bureau projections showed that under a "no further immigration" scenario, the minority share of our population would rise from about 35 percent today to 42 percent in 2050. The preschool (under age 5 ) population would become minority white. The greater minority presence would arise from higher natural-increase rates for minorities than for the aging white population. This momentum is already in place: Since 2000, natural population increase accounted for 62 percent of the growth of Hispanics, the country's largest minority group, with immigration responsible for the rest.

Already, the District and four states (Hawaii, New Mexico, California and Texas) are minority white, and in six more, whites are less than 60 percent of the population. Minorities now make up more than 30 percent of the residents in half of the nation's congressional districts, compared with a quarter in 1992.

The census will tell us more about the dispersal of Hispanics and other groups to traditional white enclaves -- suburbs and the country's midsection. A majority of all Hispanic, black and Asian residents of major metro areas now live in the suburbs. And since 2000, according to recent estimates, the fastest Hispanic growth occurred in South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Arkansas.

Color lines within our population are blurring in a different way, too, with people who identify with more than one race. The number of mixed-race married couples more than doubled since 1990, and they make up nearly 8 percent of all marriages.

2. The country is getting uniformly older.

As a baby boomer, I am part of a demographic mob. As we age over the next 20 years, the nation as a whole will see a surge in senior citizens. But different parts of the country will be aging at different rates, largely because selective "younging" is going on. This is evident from census estimates showing that during the first nine years of this decade, 25 states -- mostly in the Northeast, Midwest and Great Plains -- and the District exhibited absolute declines in their child populations, while 25 others, led by Nevada and Arizona, showed gains.

This variation in where families and children live is poised to shape a young-old regional divide that could intensify over time. Census projections for 2020, made earlier this decade, showed median ages over 40 in Maine, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, compared with below 36 in Utah, Texas, Georgia and California.

3. Big states will keep getting bigger -- especially in Congress.

For much of the postwar period, the Sunbelt megastates of California, Florida and Texas just kept growing: They led all other states in adding congressional seats based on censuses since World War II. But the economic turbulence of this past decade will affect their political fortunes. Florida was one of the nation's growth leaders for the first half of the decade and was poised to gain as many as three congressional seats after the 2010 Census, tying or overtaking New York's congressional delegation. But the mortgage meltdown led to an unprecedented exodus from the state in the past two years. Florida's likely gain of one seat will be its smallest addition since the 1940 Census.

California is not positioned to gain any seats for the first time since statehood in 1850. Despite its status as an immigration magnet, the Golden State lost large numbers of people fleeing high housing costs during the bubble years. California might have even lost a seat had that bubble not burst.

Of the three Sunbelt behemoths, Texas will take the biggest prize, probably four congressional seats -- its largest increase since the 1880 Census. It was largely immune from the housing crisis late in the decade, while it gained Katrina-driven migrants from Louisiana.

4. The census is the main source of information about our population.

Not as much as before. Unlike previous censuses, the 2010 count will provide only bare-bones information that does little more than fulfill its constitutional mandate. The questions will include the age, sex, race, Hispanic origin and household relationship status of each individual, and the size and homeownership status of each household.

What happened to all the rich data on poverty, income, ancestry, immigration, marital status and some 30 other categories we have come to expect from the census? Those "long form" questions have been given to a sample of census respondents in every count going back to 1940 -- but they won't be handed out this year. The queries have been diverted to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

In 2005, the bureau began administering the ACS to 3 million households each year to elicit the same kind of information that was previously available only every 10 years. This large and sophisticated survey has already provided important and timely insights on changing poverty, immigration and migration patterns in this economic roller coaster of a decade.

5. New technology gives us much more demographic data than the census can.

Not true. Technological developments and data collected via the Internet do give us new ways of looking at the population, and complex surveys and estimates conducted by the Census Bureau and other organizations allow us to monitor change over the decade -- but there is no substitute for counting everyone. Aside from the census's constitutional mandate to provide the basis for congressional apportionment, a national headcount also allows us to know how many people live in the nation's cities, suburbs and neighborhoods and to break them down according to race, age and gender.

There are plenty of examples of a decennial census surprising the experts. The 2000 Census, for instance, discovered sharp population surges in many old, large cities. This was unanticipated for Chicago, which had experienced decades of decline. And the spread of the nation's Hispanic population into new states such as North Carolina far exceeded expectations.

Many government and private surveys, including the ACS, rely on the decennial census to make sure their work accurately reflects the population as a whole.

This census will also tell us more about small but growing groups, such as same-sex married partners and multiracial populations, whose presence and interests can change laws and public policies.

The Census Bureau's ad campaign urges Americans to answer "10 Questions in 10 Minutes" -- and those are still 10 very important questions, whose responses will guide us for the next 10 years.

      

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Full video archive of this event is also available via C-SPAN here.

The drawing of legislative district boundaries is arguably among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democracy. Every ten years redistricting authorities, usually state legislatures, redraw congressional and legislative lines in accordance with Census reapportionment and population shifts within states. Most state redistricting authorities are in the midst of their redistricting process, while others have already finished redrawing their state and congressional boundaries. A number of initiatives—from public mapping competitions to independent shadow commissions—have been launched to open up the process to the public during this round of redrawing district lines.

On July 18, Brookings hosted a panel of experts to review the results coming in from the states and discuss how the rest of the process is likely to unfold. Panelists focused on evidence of partisan or bipartisan gerrymandering, the outcome of transparency and public mapping initiatives, and minority redistricting.

After the panel discussion, participants took audience questions.

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Few issues are closer to President Obama’s vision of the global future than his convictions about reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy. Less than three months after entering office, in a major speech in Prague, he put forward an ambitious nuclear agenda, declaring that the United States (as the only state ever to employ nuclear weapons in warfare) had a “moral responsibility…to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Seven years later, despite the administration’s having advanced other goals in non-proliferation policy, the larger vision of a nuclear-free world remains very much unfulfilled. But President Obama apparently hasn’t given up. In late May, he became the first American president to visit Hiroshima, where the United States first employed a nuclear weapon in warfare. In his speech, the president declared that “nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles…must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.” Moreover, as President Obama approaches his final six months in office, senior officials are purportedly deliberating additional policy changes that they believe could be undertaken without congressional approval. As Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said in a June 6 speech at the Arms Control Association, the president remains intent on advancing his “Prague agenda” before leaving office.

According to recent press reports, the policy options under consideration include U.S. enunciation of a nuclear “no first use” doctrine. Such a step would represent a profound shift in U.S. policy. Non-nuclear states living in the shadow of nuclear-armed adversaries have long relied on U.S. security guarantees, specifically the declared commitment to employ nuclear weapons should our allies be subject to aggression with conventional forces. They have based their own national security strategies on that pledge, including their willingness to forego indigenous development of nuclear weapons.

Northeast Asia presents a clear contradiction between President Obama’s non-nuclear aspirations and existing circumstances.

These issues bear directly on the credibility of U.S. guarantees to allies in Europe and Asia, with particular relevance in Northeast Asia. Since the end of the Cold War, the content of the U.S. extended nuclear deterrence pledge has already narrowed. Washington has long deemed any use of nuclear weapons a matter of absolute last resort. Since the early 1990s, Washington has also enunciated an unambiguous distinction between employment of conventional and nuclear weapons, including the unilateral withdrawal of all tactical nuclear weapons deployed on the Korean peninsula. 

The Obama administration itself has also moved closer to limiting nuclear weapons use exclusively to deter another state’s first use of such a weapon against the United States, its allies, and partners—in fact, the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review declared that this was a “fundamental role” of the American nuclear arsenal. At that time, it also pledged to “work to establish conditions” under which it was safe to adopt universally a policy where the “sole purpose” of U.S. nuclear weapons was to deter a nuclear attack by an adversary. The implication of such a “sole purpose” policy would be that North Korea need not fear American nuclear retaliation if it mounted only a conventional attack against South Korea. 

Whether it is “no first use” or “sole purpose use,” Northeast Asia presents a clear contradiction between President Obama’s non-nuclear aspirations and existing circumstances. The Republic of Korea and Japan (the only state ever subject to nuclear attack) confront the reality of a nuclear-armed North Korea. Pyongyang continues to enhance its weapons inventory and the means to deliver them. It also regularly threatens Seoul and Tokyo with missile attack, potentially armed with nuclear weapons. 

[A]ny indications that the United States might be wavering from its nuclear guarantees would trigger worst-case fears that the United States, above all, would not want to stimulate.

Both U.S. allies are therefore strongly opposed to a U.S. "no first use" pledge, and would likely have deep concerns about a sole purpose commitment. Though the United States possesses a wide array of non-nuclear strike options in the event of a North Korean attack directed against South Korea or Japan, any indications that the United States might be wavering from its nuclear guarantees would trigger worst-case fears that the United States, above all, would not want to stimulate. At the same time, choosing not to issue a "no first use" pledge should not in any way suggest that the United States favors nuclear use, which would play directly into North Korean propaganda strategy. Rather, the United States should not preemptively remove the nuclear option, especially when North Korea is in overt defiance of its non-proliferation obligations and is single-mindedly intent on a building a nuclear weapons capability.

The Obama administration must therefore balance its clear desire to advance a non-nuclear legacy with Northeast Asia’s inescapable realities. Enunciating a "no first use" doctrine or a sole purpose commitment in the administration’s waning months in office is a bridge too far. Though the United States can and should engage South Korea and Japan in much deeper consultations about extended deterrence, it cannot put at risk the security of allies directly threatened by attack from a nuclear-armed adversary. 

The next U.S. president will have to square this circle. In the meantime, the Obama administration should do all that it can to plan for the road ahead, even if it means policy pledges that might not be as visionary as it would prefer. 

       

       

       

The GOP presidential candidate said he would ban immigrants from sending money home to Mexico.

Donald Trump’s proposal to force Mexico to pay for a Wall guarding against the flux of immigrants into the U.S. made news this week, and rightfully so. Trump’s idea would be to curtail the ability of banks, credit unions, and wire transmission companies to send money abroad — a sharp departure from policy and law whose bipartisan aim has been to bring remittances to all countries into the financial mainstream and out from the shadowy illegal word of people moving cash in suitcases.

Encouraging remittances to go through the financial system benefits everyone: it enhances the ability to combat terrorist finance and money-laundering, it reduces crime in both the U.S. and abroad, it increases economic growth in the U.S. and overseas, and it provides for greater competition and market incentives to allow people to keep more of their hard-earned money to use as they see fit. Moving in the opposite direction would be a major mistake.

This is a big issue that affects a lot more people than one might think – more than just sending money to Mexico. In America today, more than 40 million people were born in other countries, a record number. This translates into just more than 1 in 8 Americans, a sharp increase from 1970 when fewer than 1 in 25 Americans were foreign born. Thus, it is not surprising that many people perceive America to have more foreign-born people than any time in their lifetime. However, that is not the case for the lifetime of America. Between the Civil War and the 1920s, America had as high — or higher — share of foreign born as we do today.

Remittances are not a new phenomenon. Most American families likely sent remittances at some point whenever their family first immigrated. My great-grand father sent money back to what is today the Czech Republic so that his wife and their children (including my grandmother) could come and join him and escape what became the Second World War. Today, remittance flows go toward the new generation of American immigrants and the children of those immigrants. More than $120 billion was sent abroad in 2012 according to the Pew Center and while it is true that Mexico received the largest amount at just under $23 billion, the rest of the top 5 countries may surprise you: China ($13 billion), India ($12 billion), Philippines ($10.5 billion), and Nigeria ($6 billion). And old habits remain as Germany ($2.5 billion) and France ($2 billion) are still among the top 15 countries that receive remittances from the United States.

This money comes in lots of small chunks, which can make sending it expensive. The typical new migrant worker sends money home around 14 times a year, which corresponds to once a month plus Mother’s Day and Christmas. These are usually small sums (less than $300) and represent an extraordinary level of savings given the worker’s income. The money goes through both the formal banking system including banks, credit unions, and wire transmitters who eventually use banks like Western Union and MoneyGram. Some goes through informal means, including “viajeros” who are people that literally carry cash in suitcases on planes that are often breaking the law and outside of the standard anti-money laundering and terrorist finance enforcement system. Why would anyone want to encourage that?

The idea of using this flow of funds to try to implement other policy objectives, such as border control, would be a sharp departure from current practice. The Patriot Act and subsequent federal law governing remittances in financial laws like the Dodd-Frank Act were never intended to be used to threaten to cut off the flow of migrant worker remittances. These laws were intended to track and crack down on the flow of money laundering or support for illegal and terrorist organizations while at the same time providing consumer protections to workers who are sending hard-earned cash back home to their parents, grandparents, and children. In fact, the bipartisan goal of policy concerning remittances has been to encourage the flow of money to come into the official system and to discourage the flow of funds through the underground network.

In 2004, then Federal Reserve Governor Ben Bernanke made clear that, “The Federal Reserve is attempting to support banks’ efforts to better serve immigrant populations, with remittances and other money transfers being a key area of interest.” House Financial Services Chairman Mike Oxley (R-OH) told President Bush’s then-Treasury Secretary John Snow, “Remittances between established and emerging economies foster growth in both types of economies simultaneously. I will be interested in hearing your views on how unnecessary costs can be eliminated in this area.” When Senator Paul S. Sarbanes (D-MD) introduced legislation that became the basis for today’s law that covers remittances, he had the simple goal to “increase transparency, competition and efficiency in the remittance market, while helping to bring more Americans into the financial mainstream.”

The longstanding bipartisan support for bringing remittances into the financial mainstream is based on the fact that most immigrants, regardless of whether they are U.S. citizens, legal residents, or undocumented, send remittances. A system that tried to assert proof of citizenship or legal status upon wiring money overseas would be burdensome, costly, and ineffective at best and if effective, it would simply drive more money into illegal transmission schemes while increasing crime here in the U.S. and abroad. Imagine if an entire community knew that someone would be walking through their immigrant neighborhood with a suitcase full of tens of thousands of dollars in cash.

Thought of another way, if I went to the bank to send money to my mother who lives in France part of the year, how would I prove that I’m a citizen? My driver’s license alone is not proof of legal status. Would I need to bring my passport? What if, like the majority of Americans, (62% according to the State Department) I don’t have a valid passport? Would I have to bring my birth certificate to the local Western Union? I guess the one positive thing from such a system is that it would help stop the email scams asking for money from a Nigerian Prince….

Aaron Klein is a fellow at the Brookings Institution and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury Department from 2009 to 2012. He also serves as an unpaid member of the Clinton campaign’s Infrastructure Finance Working Group; he has not served as an advisor on any banking or finance issues.

Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared on Fortune.

      

Editors’ Note: Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has proposed, in various forms and iterations, banning Muslims from entering the United States “until we figure out what’s going on,” in his words. Shadi Hamid responds to this proposal below, in an excerpt from a longer piece in The Atlantic in which Uri Friedman surveys various experts on the issue.

If Donald Trump is really interested in understanding the roots of anti-Americanism, there’s a solution: to read the hundreds of books and articles written on why, exactly, “Muslims” might not be particularly enthused about American policy in the Middle East (there’s little evidence to suggest that large numbers of Muslims have any particular antipathy toward Americans as people).

But it’s possible that Trump is just being imprecise. Perhaps what he really wants to say is not that Muslims “hate” Americans, but rather that they may be ambivalent about or even opposed to certain liberal values that are associated with being American. Obviously, it is impossible to generalize about an entire religious group, but polling does suggest that majorities in Arab countries like Egypt and Jordan, as well as non-Arab countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, aren’t quite classical liberals when it comes to issues like apostasy, religiously derived criminal punishments, gender equality, or the relevance of religious law in public life more generally.

If this happens to be Trump’s argument, it would be ironic, since Trump himself cannot be considered a liberal in the classical sense. In fact, he fits the definition of an “illiberal democrat” quite well, as I argued in a recent essay here in The Atlantic. That said, I have to admit that I’m concerned about anti-Muslim bigots misconstruing my own arguments around “Islamic exceptionalism”—that Islam has been and will continue to be resistant to secularization—after the attacks in Orlando. It’s undoubtedly true that large numbers of Muslims in both the West and the Middle East consider homosexual activity to be religiously unlawful, or haram, but let us be careful in drawing a link between such illiberalism (which many Christian evangelicals and Republican politicians share) and the desire to kill. That’s not the way radicalization works. We would never argue, for instance, that Senators Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio are “at risk” individuals who may, if we don’t keep a close eye on them, commit mass murder against gay Americans.

In any case, conservative Muslims, orthodox Jews, Christian evangelicals (or for that matter Trump supporters residing in Poland who want to emigrate to the U.S. if Trump wins) have the right to be “illiberal” as long as they express their illiberalism through legal, democratic means. These are rights that are protected by the American constitution, enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

Perhaps Trump is thinking specifically about violence perpetrated by Muslims, as he suggested in comments after the Orlando attacks. The interesting thing though—and something that is rarely acknowledged by U.S. politicians—is that the preponderance of Middle Eastern violence in recent decades has been perpetrated not by Islamists but by secular autocrats against Islamists, in the name of national security. These, as it happens, are the very strongmen that Trump seems to have such a soft spot for.

Ultimately, Trump cannot, through the force of arms or his genuinely frightening anti-Muslim rhetoric, compel the many conservative Muslims in the Middle East to be something they’re not, or would rather not be. To suggest that Muslims need to be secular or irreligious (by Trump’s own arbitrary standards) is dangerous. The message there is one that ISIS would find appealing for its own divisive purposes: that an increasingly populist and bigoted West has no interest in respecting or accommodating Islam’s role in public life, even when expressed legally and peacefully. The sad fact of the matter, though, is simple enough: Trump has less respect for the American constitution than the vast majority of American Muslims, many of whom, like me, are the children of immigrants. In Trump’s America, it so happens, my parents would have been banned from ever entering in the first place.

       

Editors’ Note: Turkey’s failed coup may lead to the worsening of Europe’s migration crisis, writes Jessica Brandt. That’s because it could lead to the dissolution of a recent pact between Brussels and Ankara over the plight of refugees arriving on the European Union’s shores. This post originally appeared on Vox.

Turkey’s recent failed coup may lead to the worsening of Europe’s migration crisis. That’s because it could lead to the dissolution of a recent pact between Brussels and Ankara over the plight of refugees arriving on the European Union’s shores. Even before the events of last weekend, the fate of the agreement was uncertain amid quarrels between the parties. Now its future is even more in doubt.

Last year, more than a million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe, roiling politics across the continent. It’s a crisis EU chief Donald Tusk has described as an “existential challenge.”

Under the terms of the deal, Turkey agreed to accept the “rapid return of all migrants not in need of international protection crossing from Turkey into Greece and to take back all irregular migrants intercepted in Turkish waters.” In other words, almost all refugees who cross into Greece are slated to be returned to Turkish soil.

In return, the EU pledged to speed up the allocation of €3 billion in aid to Turkey to help it house and care for refugees, “reenergize” Turkey's bid for membership in the EU, and lift visa restrictions on Turkish tourists and businessmen.

But the European Commission has conditioned changes to the visa restrictions on better governance in Turkey. In particular, it requires a change in President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s controversial anti-terror law, which he has used to crack down on journalists and critics. Erdoğan was already adamantly against narrowing the law to protect free speech. Having now overcome a determined coup attempt, he is even less likely to do so.

Instead, it appears probable that he will further clamp down on civil liberties, acting on his authoritarian instincts and retaliating against his detractors. On Sunday, he suggested that he might reintroduce the death penalty, a practice Turkey abolished in 2004 as part of its bid for EU membership. Doing so would widen the gap in political culture between Turkey and Europe and, as German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier asserted forcefully on Monday in Brussels, derail the already limited possibility of reigniting accession talks.

The pact has already been strongly opposed by the European left, and particularly by humanitarian and human rights groups. Rising authoritarianism in Turkey would only increase resistance to the deal, making implementation even harder, especially if those groups were to scale back their activities on the ground.

That would not be without precedent. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Doctors Without Borders, and the International Rescue Committee, among others, have suspended some of their activities in refugee centers because they do not want to be involved in implementing a deal that they describe as constituting the blanket expulsion of refugees from Turkey back to Greece.

[A] crackdown could also undermine the legal basis of the agreement.

Crucially, a crackdown could also undermine the legal basis of the agreement. One of the agreement’s key provisions is that individuals who cross from Turkey into Greece will be sent back across the Aegean to Turkey. That hinges on the notion that Turkey is a “safe third country” for migrants. A crackdown could prompt refugees to argue that it isn’t.

If that were the case, deporting them to Turkey could be seen as constituting “refoulement”—the forcible return of asylum seekers to a country where they are prone to be subjected to persecution—which is forbidden under both international and EU law.

That’s a problem, since some analysts believe worsening conditions in Turkey could lead even more people seeking refuge to journey onward to Europe. In the past, Erdoğan has threatened to “open the gates” and send refugees streaming into Europe when displeased with the level of financial assistance from Brussels earmarked for managing the crisis. Preoccupied by troubles at home, he may see stability as in his interest and resist taking aggressive steps that would cause an open breach.

For both parties, finding a stable, though imperfect, accommodation—as they were poised to do prior to the events of last weekend—is still the most promising path forward. Let’s hope the parties take it. Managing Europe’s migration crisis depends on it.

       

       

       

       

Bruce Katz focuses on the housing challenges facing Washington state in this presentation at the Housing Washington 2004 conference. In the speech Katz reviews Washington's particular challenges and then outlines a "winning affordable-housing playbook" applicable anywhere.

The metro program hosts and participates in a variety of public forums. To view a complete list of these events, please visit the metro program's Speeches and Events page which provides copies of major speeches, powerpoint presentations, event transcripts, and event summaries.

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Yesterday the U.S. Economic Development Administration announced the winners of its i6 Green Challenge grant, awarding $12 million to six regions to accelerate clean technology commercialization.  

Of particular note is an energy efficiency gambit being developed in the Puget Sound region.

In that case, a portion of the $1.3 million of federal support that will now flow to Washington’s state’s Clean Energy Partnership will be dedicated towards the building out of BETI, the Building Efficiency Testing and Integration (BETI) Center and Demonstration Network. BETI is of more than passing interest to us because the testing net work was developed by a steering committee of industry experts and community stakeholders as part of the region’s metropolitan business planning effort, spearheaded by the Puget Sound Regional Council in conjunction with the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program.  

BETI will be a physical living laboratory space for innovators in the energy efficiency field to test their products, designs, and services prior to launching them into the marketplace. When built out, the concept will be an example of a U.S. metropolitan region examining its economic position, assessing needs and gaps, and moving assertively to challenge governments, philanthropists, and private sector to invest in potentially game-changing interventions.    

In that sense, with the prospect of a state match and copious follow-on private investment down the road, the i6 Green win demonstrates the potential power of bottom-up intentional economic development strategies.

      

With the economy still reeling from the effects of the recession, metropolitan areas have become increasingly willing to explore new approaches to economic development. Moving away from traditional one-size-fits-all approaches that emphasized Starbucks, stadium-building, and stealing businesses, metro leaders are instead crafting metropolitan business plans that grow jobs from within, building on their distinct market advantages.

By partnering with private industry, nonprofit intermediaries, universities, civic leaders, research institutions, and other interested parties, regional public sector leaders are working to strengthen their economies by focusing on those industries with the greatest potential for future growth.

For some regions, these efforts have involved helping existing firms make the transition to emerging industries. Northeast Ohio’s long struggle with post-deindustrialization was made worse by the Great Recession and the collapse of the auto sector and the foreclosure crisis.

In response, regional leaders came together to launch PRISM, the Partnership for Regional Innovation Services to Manufacturers initiative. The goal of PRISM is to help small and medium-sized manufacturers in old commodities industries, like steel and automotive, reinvent their products and business models to take advantage of growth opportunities in emerging markets like bio-science, health care and clean energy.

Led by the Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network (MAGNET), a regional intermediary organization, PRISM brings together higher education institutions, regional economic development organizations, and Ohio’s Edison Technology Centers to provide market research and business consulting services, increase firms’ access to capital and talent, and foster stronger relationships within growing industry clusters. [Full disclosure: The Brookings-Rockefeller Project on State and Metropolitan Innovation provided initial advisory support to PRISM.]

“Through PRISM, we hope to demonstrate that a growing manufacturing sector is not only possible, but desirable for the region,” says MAGNET president and CEO Daniel Berry. “Reclaiming the legacy of manufacturing innovation in Northeast Ohio will enable the region’s companies to create more well-paying jobs.”

In other parts of the country, partnerships are linking up existing industry strengths to create new growth opportunities. To ensure the Seattle region continues to be a global hub of innovation, public and private sector leaders have formed the Building Energy-Efficiency Testing and Integration (BETI) Center and Demonstration Network to develop new products, services and technologies around energy efficiency for customers around the world. BETI capitalizes and integrates this region’s distinct, competitive advantages – unparalleled software and information technology, strong sustainability ethos, an emerging building energy efficiency sector, and strong post-secondary institutions and talent that can support future demand. This is not a cookie cutter idea but one that can best work with the market formula found in the Puget Sound region.

With financial support from a federal i6 Green Challenge grant and a state match, BETI will help local businesses commercialize innovations in building energy-efficient technologies, platforms, and materials by providing product validation and integration services. In addition, BETI will foster greater collaboration among industry stakeholders, including businesses, entrepreneurs, trade associations, local and state government agencies, state universities, research networks, venture capitalists, and regional utilities.  

Both Northeast Ohio and the Puget Sound region arrived at these collaborative partnerships during the course of their efforts to develop metropolitan business plans. Like private sector business plans, these regional economic development plans are rooted in market dynamics and competitive assets. The metropolitan business planning process offers a framework for regional business, civic, and government leaders to assess their metro’s distinctive market position, identify pragmatic economic development strategies that capitalize on regional assets and set forth detailed implementation-ready plans for economic growth. Once established, these metropolitan business plans will act as roadmaps for metro economies as they drive the nation toward greater prosperity, increased job creation, and a leading position in the next economy.

      

In recent months, we’ve heard a lot about the tech industry's gender gap. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women represent just 19.7 percent of software developers, an occupation with a median salary of over $92,000 a year.

Women’s underrepresentation in these and other well-paying tech jobs is a major concern given that women still earn only 78 cents for every dollar earned by men. Meanwhile, labor shortages in software development and other high-skill occupations have tech companies worried about whether they’ll be able to grow as fast as they’d like.

Seattle’s Ada Developers Academy takes aim at both challenges. This highly selective, tuition-free program prepares women students to be full-stack software developers, meaning that they can do both front-end—what the user sees—and back-end—what’s behind the scenes that makes everything work properly. Prior experience in tech isn’t necessary to earn a spot at Ada: The main prerequisite is a strong desire to pursue a career in software development.

Ada combines six months of intensive classroom instruction with a six-month internship at a sponsoring company so that students have the opportunity to apply what they’ve learned in real-world situations. Sponsoring companies—which currently include Nordstrom, Redfin, Zillow and Expedia, among others—also benefit from the internships, which provide direct access to prospective employees at a time when proficient software developers can be hard to find.

If Ada’s first cohort is any indication, the academy’s combination of rigorous in-class training and hands-on work experience has tremendous value on the job market. All 15 members of the inaugural class got job offers for software developer positions before they graduated from the program.

Seattle has long been known for its vibrant tech scene. Ada Developers Academy, its sponsoring companies and its graduates together enhance that reputation by fostering a more supportive environment for women in the city’s tech industry. In the face of serious gender disparities, organizations like Ada Developers Academy in Seattle show that it’s possible to create career pathways that will perhaps one day close the tech gender gap.

       

Editor's Note: This discussion with John Turnbull, director of asset management at the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority, is the first in a series of Q&As with urban practitioners for the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Initiative on Innovation and Placemaking.

Pike Place Market in Seattle is a leading example of how intentional governance can help vibrant urban spaces reach their potential as platforms for innovation. John Turnbull, director of asset management at the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority, sat down for an interview to tell us more about the market and the role of the Preservation and Development Authority (PDA) in its operation.

People outside Seattle tend to know Pike Place as a fish market, but it offers so much more. What makes the market special?

The Pike Place Market is a beloved part of Seattle and really unlike any other place. It’s open 363 days a year and provides space for local farmers, artisan vendors, and small businesses to thrive. It offers a wide range of social services, including a food bank, a health clinic, a senior center, child care and preschool, and assisted living for the elderly. It’s also home to nearly 500 residents who live in a mix of rent-subsidized apartments, market-rate units, and luxury condos as well as a boutique hotel and a bed-and-breakfast—all within the four-block district. Our sense of place depends on the permeability of private/commercial/public spaces, and we make a great effort to ensure that the corresponding mix of activity creates space for personal interactions.

Public support has always been a key component of the market’s success. It was first established in 1907 in response to public demand for fresh produce at fair prices. Seattleites kept the market from the wrecking ball in the 1960s and 1970s and have consistently provided public funds for capital investments—even in the midst of the Great Recession.

The market’s focus on supporting local independent business and one-to-one relationships is unique enough to create both a community sense of identity—Seattle’s “soul”—and an attraction for tourists and visitors. This has been part of the market’s identity for more than a century and has continued under the PDA’s stewardship these last 40 years.

How does the market operate? Who’s in charge?

The market’s been around since the early 1900s but its current governance structure dates back to the 1970s, when the market was almost leveled in the name of urban renewal. A group called Friends of the Market formed to fight the city’s redevelopment plans and in 1971 ran a successful ballot measure campaign to save the market. That ballot measure established the Market Historic District and created the Pike Place Market Historical Commission to make decisions about future construction and capital investments.

Commissioners are appointed by the mayor, half from a list drawn up by community organizations and half from people who live, conduct business, and own property in the market district. The commission was created to keep city government from dismantling the market, so its decisions on use, design, and business management are final, not just advisory. Overturning a commission decision requires a court appeal—and even then, appeals can be based only on questions of fair process and/or failure to follow commission guidelines.

The commission reworked the urban renewal plan to preserve the architectural and social fabric of the market. To support these goals, the city created an independent Preservation and Development Authority to oversee financial operations, development, and day-to-day management of the market. The charter [document download] that established the PDA in 1973 continues to be a guiding force for us—we refer to it all the time. It defines the PDA’s specific powers and responsibilities, which include managing the properties in the Market Historic District, supporting local farmers and small-business owners, and providing social services for low-income residents and others in the market community. Funding for social services and programs is coordinated by the Pike Place Market Foundation, which is separate from the PDA. 

How are decisions made?

The PDA executive director and staff handle day-to-day business operations, but most decisions concerning contracts, tenant relations, budgets, and the like are finalized by the PDA Council, a group of 12 volunteers who are appointed for four-year terms by either the mayor, the Pike Place Market Constituency, or the PDA Council itself (each appoints four councilmembers).

The charter created the PDA as a public steward for the market that’s much more nimble than a governmental agency and much more accountable to the surrounding community. The charter requires unusual transparency, including public meetings to approve any expenditures over $10,000; bond issues; donations made by the PDA; and adoption of the annual budget and capital budget. Meanwhile, new businesses, changes in business ownership, and modifications to buildings require approval from the Market Historic Commission, which has regular biweekly meetings that include time for public comment. Nothing happens behind closed doors.

How does the PDA get its funds and how is that funding deployed?

Over 60 percent of our revenue comes from commercial tenants, with residential rents, daystall rents and fees, parking fees, and incomes from various programs and investments making up the rest. This year we expect total revenues over $18 million, which is more than $1 million more than we projected for 2015.

About three-quarters of budgeted expenses come from tenant services, which include everything from maintenance and security to insurance, utilities, and property management. Another 14 percent goes to PDA management and administration, and the last 10 percent goes toward marketing and other programmatic expenses.

The charter also gives the PDA bonding authority, which we used for the first time this past year. The $26 million in bonds will pay down existing debt and finance the new MarketFront expansion that’s slated to open next year.

The PDA Council operates the market as a business, but it doesn’t make decisions strictly based on profit. We think about return on investment in terms of social benefit to the community. The council looks at a whole host of qualitative measures that aren’t easily captured by quantitative metrics. For instance, how do you measure “local pride”? That’s why we end up referring to our charter so often—and also why we encourage our constituents to use the charter guidelines to measure our results. 

So through the council and the charter, we’ve created a form of community-oriented economics that keeps us accountable to our constituents and lets us reinvest earnings to provide social services and keep residential and commercial rents low.

Lots of places are looking to innovation as a way to drive sustainable economic growth. Do you see Pike Place Market as a place for innovation?

Innovation is an important aspect of what happens in the market, though it looks different from what you might see in other more tech-oriented innovation districts. We offer highly localized small business incubation that’s focused on building a strong local economy. By providing a supportive environment for new businesses and strictly limiting opportunities to new ventures that haven’t yet built a customer base, we’ve created an active laboratory for experimentation.

We have a history of providing a solid base for new businesses—especially ones that are food-related. Starbucks, Sur La Table, and a large number of specialty food businesses got their start in the market. And there are an equally large number of culinary ventures whose lead chefs look to the market as a central source of inspiration and community. We support economic growth by helping new ventures get established—which for many involves developing an international presence—while also attracting customers to spend money in our community.

Seattle has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years, thanks in large part to a vibrant tech sector. How has this affected Pike Place Market?

Over the last few years, we’ve seen some significant changes in shopping patterns. Lots of neighborhoods now have weekly farmers’ markets, and grocery stores have been moving toward a more market-like shopping experience, which has meant fewer people shopping for groceries at the market. We’re also seeing more millennials and a lot more tourists, especially in the summer.

These changes got us thinking about what the market needs to do to stay relevant. Bringing in new businesses and younger entrepreneurs is part of this strategy, as are initiatives like our pop-up Express Markets, which bring fresh produce to different locations throughout the city mid-June through September. This summer we’re starting a weekly evening market at Pike Place so that local customers can shop without having to wade through the weekend tourist crowds.

We’ll always be hyper-local and focused on building a strong community of market patrons and vendors. That emphasis on personal connection sets the market apart—it’s something you just can’t replicate with e-commerce. 

       

       

       

       

       

       

Boris Nemtsov’s murder may be a turning point in current Russian history. Unfortunately, it is almost surely not a turn to the better, but one to something bad or to something even worse. This point needs to be made clear from the beginning. It is an illusion to think that this event will lead to anything positive, such as a backlash in the population at large against nationalistic rhetoric or even some kind of liberal revolution, or “Russian Spring.” 

Liberalism in Russia was left near-dead once Putin prevailed over the wave of protests in late 2011 and early 2012. The geopolitical conflict with the West over Ukraine—both Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions and the Western response of imposing sanctions—virtually guaranteed that liberal, democratic, pro-Western forces would remain irrelevant for now and, likely, for some years to come. Nemtsov’s murder only exacerbates this trend.

There are two probable scenarios going forward. Both begin with the realization that the most important conclusion from the Nemtsov murder is that it signals a lack of control by Putin over very dangerous elements in Russian society. Putin will respond by further tightening Kremlin control over Russian politics and society. The question is how forcefully and how successfully. In one scenario, Putin succeeds in stabilizing the political situation. This will result in an even more authoritarian, but somewhat stable, Russia. In the other, Putin fails to establish control and the result is a breakdown of all control and reversion to an even more extreme nationalism than now.

We do not know who murdered Boris Nemtsov. The most likely version is that it was rogue nationalist, anti-Maidan, forces. If so, this means that Putin has serious problems with his own security forces. They are either inexcusably negligent (because they allowed the murder to happen) or criminally complicit (if anyone inside the security forces in any way facilitated the crime).

Most everyone outside the Kremlin is obsessed with, as they say, the eternal Russian question of Kto vinovat—”Who is to blame?” Putin’s priorities are different. His first question is not, “Who did this?” but “Who let this happen?” So his primary concern is to solve the problem of the competence of and/or control over his security services.

Second, his main target now has to be extremist-nationalists inside Russia. They are the biggest threat to his regime, far greater than the demonstrators on Bolotnaya Square in 2011-2012. Despite the fact that it is the Kremlin itself that has been the biggest promoter of nationalism, it is aware that extreme nationalism is a danger. Last October, at the Valdai Club meeting in Sochi, Putin’s number two man, Sergey Ivanov, was asked about the threat of nationalist-extremists in Russia. He admitted there was a problem. “They do exist. They are a tiny minority. But they represent a clear risk. We need to think about that. And, especially, we need to do something about it. ... We have to make it clear to extremists that the law will be strictly enforced, and that committing illegal acts is a road that leads to nowhere.” And when we do act against those who violate the law, he said, “we will not be constrained by concerns about human rights.”

       

       

       

       

       

This is the first in a series of reports on the demographic and political dynamics under way in 10 “battleground” states, deemed to be crucial in deciding the 2008 election. As part of the Metropolitan Policy Program’s Blueprint for American Prosperity, this series will provide an electoral component to the initiative’s analysis of and prescriptions for bolstering the health and vitality of America’s metropolitan areas, the engines of the U.S economy. This report focuses on Pennsylvania. Among its specific findings are:

• Pennsylvania is becoming a demographic “bridge” between Midwestern states like Ohio and other Northeastern states like New Jersey, as its new growth is tied to urban coastal regions. While often classed as a so-called “Rust Belt” state, its eastern and south central regions are increasingly becoming part of the nation’s Northeast Corridor, with new growth and demographic profiles that warrant attention in upcoming elections.
• Eligible voter populations indicate a state in transition, where minorities, especially Hispanics, and white college graduates are increasingly important, but where white working class voters continue to play a central role. While white working class voters continue to decline as a share of voters and are less likely to work in manufacturing and goods production, they are still a critical segment of voters, including in the fast-growing Harrisburg and Allentown regions where their absolute numbers are actually increasing.
• Recent Democratic victories in Pennsylvania have featured strong support from groups like minorities, single women, and the young but have also benefited from relatively strong support among the white working class, especially among its upwardly mobile segment that has some college education. Compared to 1988, both the latter group and white college graduates have increased their support for Democrats. And both groups have increased their share of voters over the time period.
• Political shifts in Pennsylvania since 1988 have seen the growing eastern part of the state swing toward the Democrats, producing four straight presidential victories for that party. The swing has been sharpest in the Philadelphia suburbs, but has also been strong in the Allentown region and even affected the pro-Republican Harrisburg region. Countering this swing, the declining western part of the state has been moving toward the GOP.
• Key trends and groups to watch in 2008 include the white working class, especially whites with some college, who, unlike the rest of this group, are growing; white college graduates; and Hispanics, who have been driving the growth of the minority vote.

These trends could have their strongest impact in the fast-growing Allentown region, which may move solidly into the Democratic column in 2008 and beyond, following the trajectory of the Philadelphia suburbs. The even-faster-growing Harrisburg region remains a GOP firewall, but the same trends could make that region more closely contested in 2008.

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There's been a lot of talk of Pittsburgh's "new economy" as a key reason for the city's star turn as host of this week's G-20 summit, but little has been said about the region's "next economy" -- what comes after the current slump.

It's beginning to be created under our noses.

Though seemingly abstract, the G-20's big-picture decisions -- on dialing down the extraordinary fiscal and monetary steps taken in the past year, building a new regulatory architecture for global finance, and starting the process towards a more balanced global economy and sustainable future -- have big implications for metropolitan areas.

Pittsburgh's stake in the G-20 deliberations goes beyond filling up local hotels and restaurants or hiring additional police -- and even beyond showcasing the region's resilience to the recession.

The fact is that Pittsburgh already is a global metropolis, with deep and growing ties to many of the G-20 countries because of its position as a supplier to the global steel industry (and still a maker of some types of steel), its burgeoning involvement in clean-energy sectors and its established position as a global center of education and health care.

Bayer, the German pharmaceutical conglomerate, has its U.S. headquarters in Pittsburgh, employing some 2,700 workers, including 1,200 at local medical-device manufacturer Medrad. Gamesa, the Spanish wind-energy giant, opened its first North American plant in Ebensburg, about 75 miles east of Pittsburgh. All told, more than 300 international firms from 26 different countries operate in the region, employing tens of thousands of people.

Pittsburgh's goods and services exports make up more than 14 percent of the region's gross metropolitan product, with the lion's share of goods headed to Canada, China, Japan and major economies in Europe -- all G-20 partners.

Given Pittsburgh's global status, the G-20 discussions have substantial implications for the future of the region's $100 billion economy.

The big question, at this summit and others in the future, is how to rebalance the global economy. The Great Recession followed a period of excessive consumption in the United States as Americans spent more on homes and consumer goods than they produced.

The fix is easy to state, but difficult to engineer. As Larry Summers, the head of the White House National Economic Council, said recently, "The rebuilt American economy must be more export-oriented and less consumption-oriented."

This rebalancing will require major and sustained action on currency values and trade policy in the United States as well as in large export economies like China, Germany and Japan (which will need to consume more). As this occurs, U.S. metro areas like Pittsburgh could benefit substantially given their unique assets and special niches.

While this won't quite be a 21st-century version of the equation "what Pittsburgh makes, the world takes," the combination of a more export-oriented trade policy and higher costs for carbon emissions (also to be discussed at the G-20 summit) present the region's economy with both opportunities and threats.

On the plus side, Pittsburgh could export more to the rest of the world and its steel-industry suppliers could benefit from increased exports by U.S. steelmakers. Higher prices for gasoline and jet fuel could mean that manufacturers and retailers in the United States would move away from far-flung networks of global suppliers and rely more on U.S. companies.

There is a potential downside for Pittsburgh, as well: for instance, as steelmakers in Germany and other countries export less and face higher costs of using U.S.-based suppliers, they might rely less on machinery and repair services from Pittsburgh.

To help ensure that the benefits of a rebalanced U.S. economy and a new climate regime outweigh the costs to the Pittsburgh area, local corporate, labor, political, university and civic leaders need a sharp regional business plan to guide the economic policies and innovation investments that they and the federal and state governments make in the Pittsburgh area.

Pittsburgh will have to continue to reclaim polluted industrial "brown fields" for post-industrial use -- an example for cities around the country and world.

Pittsburgh also will need to figure out how to draw more international traffic to its metropolitan airport, which currently offers only one direct flight to Europe.

The upshot: It is time for U.S. metropolitan regions to become more globally fluent and for national leaders to connect their big-picture policies to the fortunes of the urban areas that drive their economies. Only in this way can the United States, and Pittsburgh, move to the next stage of their economic evolution.

       

On April 16-17, Bruce Katz, vice president and founding director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, traveled to Pittsburgh for the launch of p4: People, Planet, Place, and Performance. The initiative, spearheaded by the Heinz Endowment and the City of Pittsburgh, is committed to putting urban design and economic development to the service of an inclusive society and a sustainable physical infrastructure. The two-day launch event featured urban economic development and design experts from around the globe, with several groups from the Nordic countries--leaders in sustainable architecture and high-tech infrastructure. Below are highlights:

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

Egypt needs a new inclusive and equitable economic growth model. Unemployment has spiked since the 2011 revolution, clearing over 12 percent, a figure which is not expected to decrease for several years at least and the situation is even more dire for the country’s youth. While the likely IMF program will offer the macroeconomy a measure of relief, it cannot reverse decades of mismanagement. Egypt’s private sector may therefore not experience a recovery in the near future. The government’s situation looks similarly stressed as its gross debt is projected to rise from 73 percent of GDP in 2010 to 79 percent this year. Combined with the confusion surrounding the government’s structure and organization, it is unlikely that the public sector can fill the jobs gap or provide the needed high quality and affordable goods and services. However, the legal limbo surrounding inclusive business models (IBs) as well as intermediary support organizations (ISOs), which are supposed to provide the needed support to IBs, has unnecessarily shrunk this sector of the economy and disabled it from playing its necessary role.

In his inaugural speech, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi portrayed himself as a president for all Egyptians, including the menial and underprivileged rickshaw drivers. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Al-Nahda Program emphasizes social justice and a consensus vision across all groups in society. The new leadership is committed to social innovation with “a national strategy to develop mechanisms to support innovation dealing with community issues.”

Although the constitution has not yet been drafted and there is currently no parliament, this moment in time contains a golden opportunity for the government of Egypt to capture the energy, civic engagement and entrepreneurial spirit in the country. Under Mubarak, Egypt’s economic growth and business policy reforms helped foster the private sector, but 85 percent of the population continued to live under $5/day and this ratio did not change during the decade of growth prior to 2008. Safeguards against abuse and incentives for inclusiveness were missing, and the economy became dominated by crony capitalism with wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. People’s perception of inequity and dissatisfaction with public services increased. The governance indicators of “Voice & Accountability” and “Control of Corruption” deteriorated from 2000 to 2010, even though there was a steady improvement in “Regulatory Quality.”

Egypt needs an enabling legal framework to promote a more equitable growth model. Such a framework should encourage forms of inclusive businesses (such as cooperatives) and ISOs that could help micro and small enterprises. These firms (with less than 50 employees) represent nearly 99 percent of all non-public sector, non-agricultural firms and provide about 80 percent of employment in Egypt. But their expansion has been restricted because of the weakness of the ecosystem of incubators, angel investor networks, microfinance institutions (MFIs) and impact investors necessary to allow young entrepreneurs to start up and grow. This policy paper argues that legal and regulatory reforms that encourage ISOs and allow new forms of inclusive business to register and operate are a necessary first step towards a new inclusive growth model.

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Executive Summary

Census 2000 underscores the many social, demographic, and economic challenges facing the City of Cleveland and its residents.

Between 1980 and 2000, Cleveland lost fully one-sixth of its population. Like other older cities in the nation's "Rust Belt," Cleveland's metropolitan area also lost residents over this period, although it managed to grow modestly in the 1990s.

What little growth there was in the region occurred far from the core. The city's downtown area grew, but nearly every other neighborhood in the city and its close-in suburbs lost residents. To be sure, Cleveland actually gained modest numbers of black, Hispanic, and Asian residents in the last decade. But at the same time it lost almost three times as many white residents. As a result, the number of married couples living in Cleveland dwindled, while households not traditionally associated with the suburbs—single persons and single parents—proliferated there. A similar evacuation of jobs has occurred, and today fewer than one-third of the region's workers are employed in the City of Cleveland.

The demographic and economic impacts of decentralization in the Cleveland metro area are striking. Segregation levels between blacks and whites, and blacks and Hispanics, remain among the highest in the U.S. Cleveland ranks 96th out of the 100 largest cities in the share of adults who have a bachelor's degree, and the educational attainment of each racial/ethnic group in Cleveland significantly lags that in other cities. Not coincidentally, the city's unemployment rate is the second-highest among large U.S. cities, and median household income is the third-lowest. In the 1990s, income among Cleveland households did rise, but nearly half of all families with children still lived below or near the poverty line in 2000. With such low incomes, many of Cleveland's families fail to benefit from the city's relatively affordable rental and ownership opportunities. In many city neighborhoods today, a lack of market demand leaves senior citizens as the largest group of homeowners.

Along these lines and others, then, Cleveland in Focus: A Profile from Census 2000 concludes that:

• The Cleveland metro area continued to decentralize in the 1990s amid slow growth region-wide. Between 1980 and 2000, the City of Cleveland lost 17 percent of its population, although the pace of decline slowed in the last decade. Meanwhile, the region's suburbs grew modestly, but the locus of that growth occurred far from the core. In the 1990s, a few neighborhoods in downtown Cleveland gained residents, but population loss was widespread throughout the remainder of the city and most inner suburbs. The city lost households of all types: The number of married couples living in the city dropped by 16,000, and for every additional single-person household the city gained, the suburbs added more than 40. Today, only one in five residents of the Cleveland region lives in the central city, and less than one-third of the region's workers are employed there.

• Cleveland remains highly segregated and profits from little international immigration. The number of whites living in Cleveland plummeted in the 1990s, and modest gains in black, Hispanic, and Asian populations were not enough to compensate for these losses. The city's foreign-born population grew by a mere 400 persons over the decade, signaling that while modest numbers of immigrants continued to arrive in Cleveland (9,300 in the 1990s), an equivalent number of earlier arrivals left the city for the suburbs or beyond. In addition, the metro area remains highly stratified along racial and ethnic lines, with blacks confined to the city's east side and eastern suburbs, Hispanics clustered on the west side, and whites located in the downtown and southern/western suburbs.

• Cleveland lacks a young, highly-educated population. During the 1990s, the number of 25-to-34 year-olds nationwide declined by 8 percent, due to the aging of the Baby Boom generation. In Cleveland, this age group shrank nearly three times as fast. Consequently, the share of adults with a college degree grew more slowly than elsewhere in the 1990s, and Cleveland now ranks 96th out of the 100 largest cities in college degree attainment. Efforts to retain students attending its own universities may help accelerate growth in educational attainment, but since Cleveland's college-student population is one of the smallest among the Living Cities, strategies to increase educational access for existing residents may be needed. Unlike in many other cities, low educational attainment is not confined to Cleveland's minority groups—whites, blacks, and Hispanics all have below-average rates of college completion.

• Incomes grew in Cleveland during the 1990s, although the city remains home to a primarily low-wage workforce. As in other Midwestern cities, median household income grew at an above-average rate in Cleveland during the 1990s. However, the city's median income still ranks 98th out of the 100 largest cities. Middle-income households declined over the decade, while the ranks of moderate-income "working poor" families grew. In fact, some 62 percent of the city's households made do with incomes below $34,000 in 2000. Families with children were especially likely to earn low wages; nearly half had incomes below or near the federal poverty line.

• Homeownership increased for some groups in Cleveland, but many families face difficulties paying for housing and moving toward homeownership. About half of Cleveland's households own their own homes. That share is typical among the 23 Living Cities, but it remains low for a city with such a large stock of single-family homes. Homeownership rose for the city's Hispanic households, 41 percent of whom now own. But black households in Cleveland did not share in these homeownership gains, and were likely impeded by their low incomes, which trail those for other racial/ethnic groups. Rents in Cleveland increased by almost 10 percent in the 1990s, but remain the lowest among the Living Cities—the median unit rents for only $465. Yet even so, 40,000 Cleveland renters still pay more than 30 percent of income on rent, suggesting that most earn too little to afford even a modestly-priced unit.

By presenting indicators like these on the following pages, Cleveland in Focus: A Profile from Census 2000 seeks to give readers a better sense of where Cleveland and its residents stand in relation to their peers, and how the 1990s shaped the cities, their neighborhoods, and the entire Cleveland region. Living Cities and the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy hope that this information will prompt a fruitful dialogue among city and community leaders about the direction Cleveland should take in the coming decade.

Cleveland Data Book Series 1
Cleveland Data Book Series 2

      

Executive Summary

Cities are creations of their states. Their boundaries, their powers, and their responsibilities are all substantially prescribed by state law. With the advent of the new federalism—beginning in the 1970s and resurgent today—the devolution of power from Washington to state capitals has increased the importance of state decision making for cities.

Yet, this shift occurred precisely as cities were losing political clout in state legislatures due to population decline within city limits and rampant growth in suburban jurisdictions.

This paper argues that in response to shifting population distributions within states, cities need to build new coalitions to effectively achieve their legislative goals within state legislatures. Case studies—New York City, Chicago, Detroit, and the three largest cities in Ohio (Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus)—are used to more closely examine coalition-building methods.

Overall, the authors find:

• Cities' dependence on state government has increased as the federal government has ceded more power to the states. As cities' populations have declined, they have become weaker in state legislatures that have grown more powerful due to federal policy. In the peak year of 1978, about 15 percent of city revenues came from the federal government. By 1999 that had decreased to 3 percent. Concurrently, the federal government has shifted a number of programs to the states, which control the rules and revenue mechanisms cities operate under.

• Traditional political coalitions cities have used to achieve their state legislative goals are no longer as effective. Partisan (usually Democratic) coalitions are less reliable as focus has shifted to suburban swing districts. Moreover, as their power has decreased, cities' agendas have become more reactive, aiming to preserve the status quo in funding, infrastructure projects, and autonomy.

• Older, inner-ring suburbs are a logical new partner for cities in state legislatures. Increasingly, these suburbs, and some outer ones, have common interests with central cities as they address immigration, fiscal stress, and infrastructure woes. Such alliances would also better address metropolitan-wide issues on a metropolitan basis.

There remain many obstacles to forging such coalitions, however, including longtime distrust among big cities and their neighbors, racial disparities, and in some cases, growing investment in central cities while surrounding suburbs languish. Nonetheless, for cities to effectively influence their state governments more creative approaches to coalition building must be found.

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Before the City Club in Cleveland, Bruce Katz emphasized the importance of Ohio's older industrial cities for the state's overall prosperity and outlined, despite seemingly grim statistics, why now is the time for a rebirth of those places and how it can be achieved.

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• Download Remarks by Lt. Gov. Fisher