A NEW CALL TO THE POWER OF CITIES

ADMIT IT: When you hear the word "urban policy," even if you live in the city, don't you feel tired? Over the years, the word "urban" has come to reflect the seemingly intractable problems - poverty, crime, the grime of crumbling infrastructure - identified with the nation's core cities, including this one.

If your image of this country is of a vastly rural nation dotted with a handful of large urban centers, get ready to have your mental maps redrawn.

As part of a recent study, "Blueprint for American Prosperity," the Brookings Institution discovered that, while we weren't watching, Americans have been rearranging themselves into 363 metropolitan areas that represent two-thirds of the U.S. population and three-quarters of Gross Domestic Product. In fact, as Barack Obama said to the recent U.S. Conference of Mayors, 42 of our metro areas are among the world's top 100 economies.

The 100 largest metropolitan areas cover 12 percent of the nation's land and 65 percent of its population. Metro regions also boast 74 percent of the nation's college graduates, 76 percent of high-paying "knowledge" jobs, and nearly all of its venture capital funding. As population and economic activities continue to shift to major urban centers, our nation's future as a world power depends on federal policy catching up with that historical transformation.

Not that many of our leaders at the state or national level know this. Disdain for cities has been written into much legislation coming out of state legislatures, including ours.

Judging from current federal policy and programs, our leaders are still mentally wearing overalls and carrying pitchforks - which is what they must have had on when they recently passed a $302 billion Farm Bill.

This presidential election year is a critical moment to redraw our outdated mental maps. This is the moment to develop a metropolitan strategy to deal with the challenges of climate change, globalization and wage stagnation, a strategy that harnesses the assets in our metro areas that have not been utilized fully.

This page will be focusing on some of those issues over the coming months as we explore how to shape a national policy that recognizes what has been a rapid shift in economic realities. The radical change has rendered traditional boundaries - between city and suburb and between state and state - not only meaningless but dangerously counterproductive.

This has to happen at the national level because metropolitan areas spill across state boundaries. Obama's speech to the mayors' meeting in Miami, shows that he gets it: He called for major investments in infrastructure and in providing broadband access to every person in the nation. Republican John McCain has yet to be heard from.

Meanwhile Congress has taken action. Soon after taking office, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi resurrected the bipartisan Congressional Urban Caucus after years of dormancy and named Philadelphia's own U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah as its chair.

While its name is retro, the caucus' approach has been decidedly "metro." This week marked a big first step: $295 million for Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants as part of a bill that will be sent to the full House as a vote. If enacted, communities will decide how best to use the funding: weatherization, energy efficiency and alternative energy.

It's a good start - but more is needed.

Because no matter where we live or work, we can't allow the greatness of America to become an urban myth. *