|
 If this latest report card on the Twin Cities region?s competitiveness were a medical chart, it might say that our vital signs remain strong but the immune system is weakening.
The results beg these questions: Are we destined to be cold, old, with blue politics slouching toward merlot, competing with red states with warmer climates, and losing competitive position, just slowly enough that we do not react? Are we so satisfied with our 20th century experience that we just assume success in the 21st? Why does our overall score of B- match Austin, but people nationally are more likely to think of Austin as a growing success? Do we still have it in us to imagine better ways of doing things, or does discomfort with change, reinforced by the good life most of us have, leave us just hoping for the best?
We?re still rich, on average. Household incomes, pumped by our high numbers of workers per household, remain substantially above the median. Not everyone?s doing well, but there?s enough wealth around to keep the average high. The asset gap though continues to widen, notably in the run-up of housing values from the middle market on up.
Paradoxically, income from investments, a marker for wealth creation, lags the average. The Twin Cities is stuck in the third quartile for long-term earnings growth. Why do Boston and Denver do so much better? (You can explain Boston in terms of medical assets and biosciences, but Denver, hit really hard by the dot.com/telecom meltdown, is also ahead. Has Denver created higher attractiveness to wealth generators, despite a score in this report hardly worthy of bragging rights?)
Two-thirds of economic growth nationally comes from entrepreneurial start-ups. So far, strangely, that is our weak suit. Despite legacy advantages, we have fewer of these and many of those we have grow up to leave home for other places. Where is the next Earl Bakken crouched over a garage work bench, doing work that can turn into a Medtronics? How many Art Frys are we growing who?ll be imagining a Post-It notes during choir-practice, to add to a 3M portfolio? Do we now think a steady sprinkle of singles will give us a good score, so that we no longer need to swing for the fences?
For the last two generations, the Minnesota Difference has been having better prepared people -- people who studied hard and rendered a full day?s work. Increasingly, though, we haven?t produced enough college-educated people for the kinds of jobs we have, or imagine we want. So, like a number of our competitors, we count on importing the talent. The pool from which that talent comes is fast shrinking. We?ve hit the limits on people from the Dakotas and Iowa. Every year fewer students from places like China and India come here to school. Asian countries are building their own universities, at high quality levels. Even Harvard and MIT report more trouble attracting top Asian students. And most who do now seem to prefer taking their credential home to grabbing a U.S. green card. Just read the first 300 pages of Tom Friedman?s The World is Flat for all the trend evidence any of us should need. We in Minnesota, (sorry, Garrison, cup your hands over your ears) are not all that different from the national profile that Friedman paints.
The single most reliable proxy for future economic success is the proportion of the adult population that has a B.A. or higher degree. A snapshot today makes us look good; we rank eighth among large urban regions. But the Minnesota trend is in the other direction.
People say they like living here, though one in four says that quality of life is slipping. Seventy-one percent told a recent Humphrey Institute poll that school quality was declining.
We?ll see the region?s population grow by another million in the next 20 years. In Denver, Charlotte, or Salt Lake City, facing that much or more, growth is welcomed, increasingly planned for, with long-term infrastructure and institutional investments to match. In the Twin Cities, we?re ambivalent about growth, so we?re slow to make any big investments. We act as though our 1960s-era road system will get us through, and as slow as we are to build a truly integrated, permanent, user-friendly transit system, we?re condemning ourselves to have to use the roads we have for nearly every trip we make. Why?
State government seems to have lost any sense of partnership with local governments. It?s all gotcha politics, cuts in aid, and let?s make a deal. When what?s needed is a serious partnership around these competitive issues. We have the advantage of a regional body the Metropolitan Council but other than relying on it for vital services, we don?t seem to trust its potential for leadership.
Our legislature spends most of its time on the issues that have the least relevance to our competitive position. Finally, when forced to, they pay some attention to the budgets, though not to the system problems, of education and healthcare. Transportation remains in the foster care of a few organizations that think the state may eventually return to its responsibilities.
This month saw legislators patting themselves on the back for keeping the NorthStar commuter-rail and the Central Corridor projects alive. Meanwhile, Phoenix attracts the Mayo Clinic along the rail line it?s actually building, to connect with bioscience giant TGen and Arizona State University. Denver is adding six lines, 57 stations and 119 additional miles of rail, connecting most of their employment destinations in a single system.
People used to come here to see the leading edge. Now we organize trips to see what we didn?t do.
This comes down to a question of leadership. And that?s what we should be debating. When I moved here in the early 1970s, the business community provided the spark to get things done. Public affairs vice presidents had the ear of CEOs and not only attended meetings, but saw to it that someone followed up on opportunities. Spring Hill flourished as a beehive of debate. The Citizens League still had a substantial budget for involving citizens in policy studies. The Minnesota Business Partnership cut its teeth on some bigger than its own economic interests, providing civic clout to introduce the policy of school choice. The newspapers actually covered public affairs. By the late-1980s this pattern had largely disappeared, not suddenly, just slowing slipping into the mists of our civic history.
We, like Seattle , score a high average for social capital, for trust, especially compared to a place like Chicago. But all our connections and networking somehow stop short of decisive action.
The quality of leadership is not easily quantified. But I?d say we lost something when business civic initiative disappeared. In part it was a response to cultural change a pulling back from the old model of business deciding everything for everybody. Business executives also found their time for civic affairs under the pressure of increasing global competition. Still, we lost something that business bias for action, the incurable impatience that demanded that we not merely admire problems but advance solutions with real timetables.
Some see the Itasca Project as the resurrection of this tradition. It?s possible. But don?t bet on it. CEOs these days have easily divisible allegiances. What Itasca is trying to do is very hard.
What?s missing is any discernible sense of ambitious coalitions. Coalitions are the new chemistry of civic leadership. How else did Envision Utah get a consensus to build higher density communities around a rail and bus transportation network in the most conservative region in America and one that doesn?t score as well as the Twin Cities in this report card? How else did the Chicago region manage to get more investment in lower-priced housing near job centers and a balance of investment between roads and transit? Only with the Metropolis 2020 coalition one table with many constituencies. The same with Phoenix busy conquering old divisions with a recognition of shared interests.
Denver tops the action-lists these days, with a civic culture that decides what needs doing and figures out, without a lot of delay, how to do it. Take just the most recent example: that expansion of their transit system came as a result of a referendum pushed hard by a coalition of developers, elected officials from 31 communities, the principal environmental groups, and the heads of the major business organizations. Even with a governor actively opposing the measure, support was overwhelming.
The other mysterious matter is strategy. Strategy is something our region has never believed necessary. And we?ve done reasonably well without one. But, frankly, I cannot think of any major metropolitan region in the country with trends in the right direction these days that cannot tell you what its strategy is. I live here, know a lot of our current leaders, and I cannot tell you what our strategy is. I can only tell that we think we do not need one. Mark Yudof was one of the founders of the Great North Alliance, shortly after he became president of the University of Minnesota . He asked about a Twin Cities or a state strategy. He got a lot of benign and bland responses. So he launched one at the University. Our institutional and elected leaders marveled at, well, his audacity. Fortunately, the university responded to his challenge. But generally, the rest of us mostly shuffled our civic feet. We should face the fact that the state?s economy is, as it?s long been, tied to the decisions made by the University. And maybe it?s the best bet we have. Because we are not getting strategy from any other source. So, for now, we like living here, even with our slip-sliding B-.
__________________________________________________
Curtis Johnson, a partner in the , is a former chief of staff to Gov. Arne Carlson and chair of the Metropolitan Council. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Great North Alliance. The entire GNA Opportunity Forecast is available at www.thegreatnorth.com.
|
