Cities Take Business Approach to Planning

Neal Peirce looks at the emerging trend and explores how cities are taking lessons from business -- and finding success.

"Seattle, the Twin Cities and the Cleveland area are even in the midst of what Brookings is heralding as a new era of applying modern business-style planning to the economic development potential of entire citistates.

Why this attention? 'Our world is marked by a network of metropolitan areas that work together and compete against each other,' some even spilling over state and national borders, said Wolfgang Nowak of the Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society. The metros are, he noted, 'the new regions of the 21st century, centers of innovation and economic growth,' but sharing 'the same problems: energy crisis, pollution, slum areas, crime, immigration' - all reasons for 'new forms of governance.'"