[EastSideHBG]

An excerpt from this report was in our editorial section today (under this thread's title) and I found it VERY interesting. Going to the site, I found a boatload of information, so I figured many of you would be interested in it too. Even though it focuses entirely on Pennsylvania, I feel there are enough PA forumers here and enough people interested in our cities to have a really good discussion on these findings. :)

The site: http://www.brookings.edu/pennsylvania

There are profiles for nine of our top Metropolitan areas, plus loads of other info. Here's an example of the info. you will find there (all in .pdf format). I looked up my metro, Harrisburg:

Harrisburg ranked 5th among PA's largest metros for pop. growth from 1990-2000. In that time, HBG grew by 7%, adding 42,000 residents during the decade--one quarter of them from in-migration--bringing the metro pop. to 629,400. Harrisburg's 2000 population was the fourth-largest among all Pennsylvania metro regions.
The region lost young adults and gained seniors during the 1990s.
70% of the region's population growth took place in Harrisburg's outer suburbs in the 1990s.
At the same time, Harrisburg's cities and boroughs lost population.
The region maintained relatively high income levels but only average income growth rates.
Harrisburg ranks relatively high on high-school graduation rates but quite low on higher education.
Greater Harrisburg is consuming a lot of land and becoming less dense.
Despite improvement in some areas, urban decline is weakening many of greater Harrisburg's older neighborhoods.
Metro Harrisburg's above avg. pop. growth during the 1990s reflects its solid assets--not least those of a compact riverside downtown, charming neighborhoods and the state capital. Nevertheless, the area's decentralizing growth pattern is at once consuming farmland and undermining the health of established communities.
Just a few things you will find in this report, and these are just the topics. There is quite a bit of detail provided for each subject. Enjoy, and feel free to discuss!!!

[SuperstarMark]

FASCINATING reports... thanks for sharing!!!

I read the Pittsburgh one... nothing we don't already know.

[EastSideHBG]

Thanks Mark. :)

[shoowaa1]

Even though I'm not in or from PA this is a good read and thanks for sharing EastSideHBG (Dave), it kind of makes sense that the elderly folks would want to be in close to medical services and such. As for younger upper-income people I wonder if they just seem to perfer moving out on a 5-20 acre spread with dense woods on their property plus room for horses and the kids to romp. Interesting because where my sister and her family live in southern Maryland (St Mary's County near the town of California) they have 15 acres with dense woods and 4 acres for their 2 horses. My brother-in-law loves it (my bro-in-law grew up on a 2,600 acre farm/ranch in eastern South Dakota) as does my sister, niece and nephew (yes my sister and me grew up on a small acreage out between Arvada and Broomfield CO before the countryside got sprawled over by cookie-cutter subdivisions and strip shopping). Several of my brother-in-laws co-workers also live on 5-25 acre spreads near them. Sounds like its a very similar situation in PA and I'm sure in many states in the Mid-Atlantic region with young and middle-aged folks perferring to live out in the countryside but within say maybe within 5-15 min of the strip malls and such of a nearby city and yet they could be within the far outer limits of the city (I wonder if Harrisburg and other PA cities have annexed large amounts of land way far out to take advange of the acreage subdivisions and the property tax potential they offer?).

Albert (Shoowaa)

[Evergrey]

(I wonder if Harrisburg and other PA cities have annexed large amounts of land way far out to take advange of the acreage subdivisions and the property tax potential they offer?).

Albert (Shoowaa)

That's sorta what my hometown of St. Marys did in 1994. It was once a tiny borough losing population surrounded by a booming township. But in 1994 the voters decided to consolidated St. Marys borough with Benzinger township to create the City of St. Marys. I think it was a great idea, though there have been problems along the way (mostly due to local officials' ineptitude and idiocy). Now the whole city is gaining population and there is no disadvantage to living in the core.

[EastSideHBG]

(I wonder if Harrisburg and other PA cities have annexed large amounts of land way far out to take advange of the acreage subdivisions and the property tax potential they offer?).

You will never hear "annex" and "Harrisburg" in the same sentence these days. Our Commonwealth's laws on the subject make it next to impossible. As far as consolidation of the bankrupt boroughs around the city, they all fight tooth and nail not to be a part of the city. They want to be a part of the larger, richer townships that border them, but the townships don't want them because of their financial problems. So what we have is quite a few small boroughs that are bankrupt and going nowhere, and probably never will. If they would just bite the bullet and become a part of the city, then something could get done. It's a sad situation here in PA. :(


Here is a good editorial from today's paper on this study. I will post the second part tomorrow:


HOLLOWED OUT

Monday, December 08, 2003

(First of two parts) It begins -- in a very real sense -- with the abandoned buildings in the rundown neighborhoods of Pennsylvania's urban cores. Our cities -- with their troubled schools, blocks of derelict buildings, high taxes and eroding commercial base -- have become unattractive places to live and work.

A third of Philadelphia's land mass -- 44 square miles -- is considered "stressed" or in need of reclamation because of "deteriorated housing stock, numerous vacancies, and many demolitions," according to the city's Neighborhood Transformation Initiative.

But as the cities, boroughs and older suburbs have declined or "hollowed out," sprawl on the suburban fringe has consumed land at an astonishing rate. One-third of the land ever ur banized in the commonwealth since its found ing nearly four centuries ago occurred in the last 15 years.

And for that, Pennsylvania is paying a stiff price in lost farmland and open space, increased costs, declining cities and town centers, growing segregation, loss of the state's best and brightest young people to more attractive locales and a "languishing economy." That's according to The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, which yesterday issued an important new report, "Back to Prosperity: A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania."

While much of the report covers old ground and some familiar suggestions for improvement, it ties together the state's various threads of dysfunction in a compelling way, backed up by facts and figures, that argues powerfully for an end to business as usual in Pennsylvania. This is not a state that changes easily, but change it must or it will be digging itself into an economic and social hole that threatens to put a permanent wrap on the state's long decline.

Nor should those of us who live in the relatively prosperous midstate assume that this region is an exception to what the report's authors describe as a state "stuck in a cycle of malaise."

Perhaps the report's most disturbing finding relative to our area is that in a state where the "concentration of minorities in ... cities and older municipalities has created some of the most segregated communities in the nation," Harrisburg ranks as the most segregated metropolitan area in Pennsylvania, and the 16th most-segregated in the country, ahead of Philadelphia (26th), Pittsburgh (31st) and York (33rd). Meanwhile, both the overall population and jobs in the region have been migrating to the suburbs, a trend duplicated around the commonwealth, making it increasingly difficult for the poor and minorities left behind in the cities to find decent employment.

But even as this stark deterioration in Pennsylvania's cities, boroughs and older suburbs is documented in telling fashion, the Brookings report is unstinting in its call for rebuilding and revitalizing the old urban and town centers as central to turning around the state's economic prospects. For one thing, young people gravitate to "cool cities" that are inviting and attractive and project excitement. For another, in the "knowledge economy" clusters of skilled people generate economic growth. The report sees "a special potential to catalyze growth" in the state's many cities, boroughs and older townships "because they possess assets unavailable elsewhere in such concentration."

But these would be different communities than exist today. At a minimum, Brookings urges more inter-governmental collaboration among the state's 2,566 municipal entities. But preferably this "balkanized governance," with 80 percent of the governmental units having fewer than 5,000 people, would be downsized by making mergers and consolidation easier to execute.

Pennsylvanians have heard this before, of course. But the fact remains that if this state is to prosper in the 21st century, it needs to modernize and rationalize its 19th century form of government. The Brookings report will generate a new conversation about reform, but as always it is going to require Pennsylvanians to take the difficult steps to carry it out. (Tomorrow: Solutions for a better Pennsylvania.)


Is there any hope here in this state? When will our politicians and citizens wake the f*ck up? :hell:

[EastSideHBG]

Part deuce. Even more sickening:


STATE SPRAWL

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

(Second of two parts)

Pennsylvania experienced minimal population growth in recent decades, just a 2.5 percent increase between 1982 and 1997. In that same period, however, the consumption of land by development increased by a whopping 47 percent.

Among the states only Wyoming consumed more open space per additional resident than Pennsylvania.

That house with an acre of lawn to mow may be what people want these days, but according to the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, "the state is squandering a key source of competitive advantage: Its superb natural assets."

Such growth is routinely assumed to "increase the local tax base." But as Brookings notes in its new report, "Back to Pros perity: A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania," research has "repeatedly documented that highly dispersed growth increases taxpayers in frastructure and service costs."

And the report argues that haphazard, uncoordinated state investment policies are facilitating sprawl. This manifests itself in a number of different ways, but one of the more telling is the estimated $360 million in state business assistance programs that supported development in outlying areas. This apparently included loans to distribution centers (trucking terminals) in Cumberland and Dauphin counties, where the public is practically up in arms against the deluge of trucking in the region.

"Planning" has been something of a dirty word in Pennsylvania virtually since the inception of the concept. The state and its localities have thus found it easier to go through the motions of planning without actually making it count for anything.

That needs to change. Brookings recommends an end to the kind of situation that exists in Cumberland County, where six rural townships refuse to plan or zone. It recommends that state law mandate that county planning agencies plan for localities that don't plan for themselves. It also calls for requiring, rather than merely suggesting, that local comprehensive plans conform to the county plan and that local zoning conform to the comprehensive plan.

And it calls for an upgrade in state planning, which has been essentially non-existent for the last decade. It also proposes an increase in the quality of planning, which is largely left in the hands of amateurs in this state.

As we noted yesterday, central to the Brookings strategy to revive Pennsylvania's economic fortunes is turning the state's focus toward reviving the commonwealth's rich array of cities, rural town centers and older suburbs. It suggests that the state give priority in its investments to "infill" projects, such as brownfields, where it proposes a number of ways to make them more attractive for development. These include creation of a special authority to facilitate the development of brownfields, special loans and tax-incentives. It calls for an inventory of vacant and abandoned buildings and a revision of foreclosure laws to assist localities in acquiring, assembling and redeveloping blocks of properties.

Two of Pennsylvania's major strengths are higher education and medical facilities. Despite their considerable local presence, Brookings contends that they are often overlooked and that efforts should be made "to find ways they can be fully leveraged to create jobs, income, and wealth in the state's older areas."

Indeed, for all of the state's considerable economic development initiatives, employment and wage statistics suggest that Pennsylvania is evolving into a low-wage state. Instead of putting out a helping hand for every company that asks for it, Brookings makes the sensible recommendation that the state pick its spots by focusing on a few key industries. It suggests the appointment of a task force "to identify potential industry clusters and niches the state should cultivate."

In fact, leading industries, unions and universities in Pittsburgh have done just that by seeking to position the city as the center for a future industry based on magnetic levitation, a technology that -- as the Japanese recently demonstrated -- can move trains at speeds that have reached 361 miles per hour. But the Pennsylvania Maglev project has been hampered by inconsistent federal, state and even local support.

We've been down this way before with reports on how Pennsylvania needs to plan better and to more aggressively address economic and revitalization issues. Many of the reports predicted the worsening problems confronting the state today, but they were ignored.

It's likely that will happen again. But it shouldn't. Every legislator, every state, county and local official in a position to have some impact on where this state is headed, needs to read this report for its value as an overview of just how precarious Pennsylvania's position has become in the broader scheme of things.

In the end, it comes down to leadership. These are tough issues that require taking on some entrenched ideas and bailiwicks, and few in positions of power have wanted to take those risks. That lack of attention has hurt this state more than most people realize.

Brookings has reminded us that there is much work to be done to achieve a prosperous Pennsylvania. We should not, as we have so often in the past, squander this new opportunity to move the state forward.

"Back to Prosperity: A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania," is available at www.brookings.edu/Pennsylvania.