In an effort to promote a balanced growth strategy for the United States, Regional Plan Association and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy brought together two dozen scholars and economic development practitioners in March 2009 for an America 2050 research seminar to explore new economic development strategies for the nation's underperforming regions. The seminar gathered people with a range of expertise and diversity of backgrounds, including those from declining, post-industrial regions, rural and frontier communities, and experts in state and federal economic development policy to address strategies for declining places within the nation's emerging megaregions and in the spaces in between. Three research papers were developed for the seminar by Yoav Hagler, Robert Yaro, and Nicolas Ronderos of Regional Plan Association. They are collected in this new report along with a summary of the conversations that took place at the seminar.

Download "New Strategies for Regional Economic Development."

Climate change, underfunded infrastructure, outdated management approaches, and the pressures of urbanization are creating a looming crisis for America's water. Because of these multiple changes, a fundamental shift is needed from traditional, heavily engineered and segregated approaches to integrated, systems approaches that work with nature and provide multiple benefits. A new America 2050 working paper outlines preliminarily steps toward a new national water agenda including new financing strategies and recommendations for policy reform.
Download "A Systems Approach to Water Resources."
Image: flickr/La Citta Vitta

Defining the corridors in America that are most appropriate for high-speed rail service is critical to the long-term success of America's high-speed rail program. A new report by America 2050 offers one mechanism for assessing which potential high-speed rail corridors will have the greatest ridership demand based on population size, economic activity, transit connections, existing travel markets and urban spatial form and density.

The authors evaluate 27,000 city pairs in the nation to create an index of city pairs with the greatest demand for high-speed rail service. The paper provides a list of the top 50 city pairs, which are primarily concentrated in the Northeast, California, and the Midwest, and provides recommendations for phasing corridor development in the nation's megaregions.

Download the full report (PDF 3.2MB)

Download the Press Release.

View an Interactive Map of America 2050's proposed phasing plan for a national high speed rail network.

Working Paper on Megaregions, Governance, and Finance

By Mark Pisano, Dan Mazmanian, Richard Little, Alison Linder, Bev Perry.

Download the Paper.

America is entering a tumultuous period unrivaled in recent history, in which we must confront a host of challenges including a deep recession, our nation's dependence on foreign oil, and the challenge of global survival because of climate change. To face these challenges, a transformation is needed to streamline and improve our systems of governance, planning and finance of the infrastructure systems necessary for the nation's sustainable growth. This paper calls for the adoption of a Strategic Investment Framework by the federal government that would evaluate infrastructure investments against a Triple Bottom Line of environmental health, social equity, and economic growth. The paper also proposes a new governance and decision-making process for megaregions, in which university-based Centers of Excellence would assist partnerships of local and state governments in outcome-based procurement for major infrastructure projects and project evaluation against the Triple Bottom Line performance criteria. 

This week President Obama announced his Administration's plans for the most significant investment in intercity and high-speed rail in a generation. With the $8 billion down payment made in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and an additional $5 billion in his proposed budget, Obama has signaled the start of a new era of commitment to intercity passenger rail after decades of disinvestment and lack of federal support.

If one wishes to travel between metropolitan areas today there are, at least theoretically, four choices - drive, fly, take a train, or take a bus. In fact, in many cases all four choices may not be reasonable or even available options. Beyond Driving and Flying, a report of the intercity passenger working group of America 2050's Strategic Investment Framework, details the need for expanded options for intercity passenger travel and lays out a vision for a proposed intercity passenger network composed of high-speed rail, corridor and long distance rail and intercity bus service. Click here to read the full report.

What if there were a zero-cost technology that enabled continued and even increased U.S. coal utilization with a 90% reduction of associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions? How would the U.S. economy change if implementation of this technology could offset billions of dollars in foreign oil purchases through domestic coal use and create thousands of jobs over the next 5 years? How would commodity markets change if this technology
produced sustainable bio-crude for use in existing petroleum refineries at less than $50/barrel and high quality vegetable protein and micronutrients for human, livestock, and aquaculture consumption for less than $500/ton?

A new America 2050 policy brief by Dan Fuller explores these questions and offers a road map toward commercializing profitable emissions mitigation technologies.
 
Download the policy brief.

Download the Paper.

By Polly Trottenberg, Executive Director, Building America's Future

The U.S. is noteworthy for the lack of goal-based criteria or performance measures in its infrastructure programs and our extremely poor data collection on transportation at the federal, state and municipal levels. With growing consensus among the transportation community that the next transportation bill should include strong national goals and ways to evaluate performance against those goals, our poor data collection poses serious hurdles.

Informed by a politically diverse focus group of current and past Congressional staffers, transportation experts and statisticians, the paper makes recommendations on how to better inform and motivate members of Congress and administration officials to integrate data and analysis into the next surface transportation bill.  

This paper is the second in a series of three papers commissioned for America 2050's recent workshop, "Envisioning a Trans-American Network."