PA's future - Brooking Institute

[tw]

The Brookings Institute performs an comprehensive analysis of the PA economy, its problems, and how it could address those issues. Most requires actions starting with the Governor. The current PA Governor has demonstrated ability to start such programs. Over the years, will he address these problems? Below are selected paragraphs, sentences, and phrases from that report at http://www.brook.edu/pennsylvania:


Nearly 80 percent of Pennsylvania’s residents were born and raised in the state.

• Pennsylvania is barely growing and it’s aging. During the 1990s, Pennsylvania garnered the third-slowest growth among states, as it grew by just 3.4 percent—or 400,000 residents. That growth at least improved on the declines and stasis of the 1970s and 80s. But the recovery remained anemic. Making these trends starker are the tepid population dynamics they mask. In the latter half of the 1990s the sixth-largest state experienced the fifth-largest net out-migration of residents, and the ninth-largest percentage loss of young people aged 25- to 34-years old in 2000. Meanwhile, the state added relatively few births and captured only modest immigration. Consequently, the Commonwealth now ranks second among states for its share of Americans over age 65. Pennsylvania lacks the vibrant population dynamics usually associated with flourishing economies.

Instead, the Commonwealth ranks near the bottom of states in employment growth. Pay lags behind both the nation and other Mid-Atlantic states. And while the state’s top-flight health care and education specialties flourish as the service sector grows, an unusually large percentage of the state’s workers (60 percent of them) toil in lower-pay jobs with wages of less than $27,000 per year. Darkening the prospects for a quick reinvention is Pennsylvania’s relatively low level of higher education. In 2000, only 22.4 percent of Pennsylvanians possessed a bachelor’s degree, compared to 24.4 percent nationwide. Although that number has been improving, the Commonwealth still ranks just 30th among the states on this key indicator—lower than all its neighbors but West Virginia and Ohio. Pennsylvania does not yet excel on this or other critical indices of competitiveness.

• Pennsylvania is barely growing
• The state is spreading out—and hollowing out
• The state’s transitioning economy is lagging

• Pennsylvania’s population is barely growing. Only North Dakota and West Virginia grew more slowly in the 1990s.

• The state is spreading out—and hollowing out. Population and jobs aren’t growing so much as shifting from close-in places to farther-out ones

• The state’s transitioning economy is lagging. Pennsylvania ranks near the bottom of states in employment growth. Pay lags behind both the nation and Mid-Atlantic states. And a large percentage of the state’s employees work in low-wage jobs

Pennsylvania’s population grew by just 2.5 percent between 1982 and 1997, but its urbanized footprint grew by 47 percent over that time. That meant that the third-slowest-growing state in the country developed the sixth-largest amount of land, as it consumed more farmland and natural space per added resident than every state but Wyoming. In short, the state is squandering a key source of competitive advantage: its beckoning landscape and superb natural assets.

Populations in older Pennsylvania are sagging and with them long-vibrant neighborhoods. Tax bases are stagnating. And jobs continue to relocate to the greenfields, leaving deserted factories and abandoned commercial blocks behind. Pennsylvania, quite simply, is squandering the enormous human and material investment it has made in its older communities over three centuries.


Five recommendations:
We recommend that Pennsylvania create a statewide vision for economic competitiveness and land-use, and get serious about planning and coordination.

We recommend that Pennsylvania fully assess the spatial impacts of its programs and make reinvestment in its older cities, boroughs, and older townships its explicit priority.

We recommend that Pennsylvania invest heavily in education and training, promote development in key select industries, and focus on industries that promote the revitalization of older communities.

We recommend that Pennsylvania make itself a world leader in devising policies and programs to encourage wholesale land reclamation and redevelopment in cities, towns, and older townships.

We recommend that Pennsylvania assess its state-local government system, foster more coordination through its own actions and incentives, and make it far easier for governments that want to work together to do so.


Slow immigration, heavy out-migration, and light inmigration also explain why Pennsylvania now ranks second among the states for its share of older Americans.

The faster-growing southeastern and south-central portions of the state had relatively low shares of seniors, while the northeastern, western, and central parts of the state are grayer.

The bulk of Pennsylvania’s growth in foreign-born population took place in the eastern and south-central regions in the 1990s.

Pennsylvania is suffering from a serious “brain drain”

The Commonwealth lingers in the lower half of states based on its percentage of residents with bachelor’s and associate’s degrees. And while the state does an excellent job of attracting college and graduate students to its many universities and colleges—the state ranked sixth among states based on its number of college students in 2000—it has a markedly more difficult time retaining them after graduation.31 A recent study by the Pennsylvania State Data Center reveals, for example, that between 1999 and 2001, Pennsylvania experienced a net loss of over 20,000 adults who had college or graduate degrees, over 13,000 of whom were aged 20 to 29.32 The analysis also concluded that the state lost over 21,000 residents who had some college training.

Over 80 percent of those graduating from the University of Pennsylvania between 1990 and 2000, and over 70 percent of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) graduates, have since left the state. Most fled to such lifestyle and economic hot spots as New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. ... Pitt and Temple graduates tend to remain in-state

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[tw]

[continued from first post]

Various indicators also show that Pennsylvania is not among the most entrepreneurial of states. For example, the economic research firm Cognetics ranked the state just 44th in its 2001 “entrepreneurial hotspots” report, which measures the frequency with which new firms start and young firms grow in states and metropolitan areas.43 Moreover, statewide job growth in new business start ups has been weak: From 1993 to 1998, Pennsylvania experienced less than 18 percent growth in employment in firms less than five years old—compared to 21 percent nationally.44 Finally, the Commonwealth fell in the middle of the pack based on a 2002 ranking of its share of “gazelle” jobs—jobs in companies with annual sales revenue that grew 20 percent or more for four years in a row.

The flight of households and jobs away from Pennsylvania’s older areas separates poor and minority residents from employment opportunities.

... and it’s fair to say the Commonwealth possesses arguably the most fragmented and inflexible system of local government in the nation ...

First off, Pennsylvania’s extreme governmental fragmentation hinders the state’s ability to mobilize its talents to generate growth. ... Pennsylvania’s profusion of players and agendas has made it difficult for the state to adopt a single economic development plan as other states have.
... the average land development plan takes from 19 to 24 months to obtain, compared to 60 to 90 days in Maryland.

A lack of systematic planning compounds the problems of governmental fragmentation in Pennsylvania.

To begin with, Pennsylvania’s intense localism in planning has over time stunted the Commonwealth’s own state-level planning and coordination capacity. ... As a result, projects and policies frequently work at odds. A shortage of professional planners in the government further hobbles sensible direction-setting and contributes to haphazard spending and program implementation.

Meanwhile, the largely voluntary nature of planning in Pennsylvania guarantees that many Commonwealth localities neither plan nor zone, meaning they lack a settled framework for fostering a desired pattern of development.

Even more problematic is the fact that planning remains mostly elective in Pennsylvania, which lacks binding requirements that local ordinances and actions conform to larger-view plans. [Cited is Ephrata Twp whose school district has chosen to build a new school "even though the new school flouted the region’s intricate growth-management system and several local plans."]

As a result, planning in Pennsylvania remains not only optional, but often feeble. Plans, lacking binding importance, are frequently out-of-date or highly vague. Meanwhile, Section 303(c) frees elected officials from worrying much about whether a particular rezoning or development permission runs afoul of any municipal or county land use plan. In this environment zoning and rezoning can easily deteriorate into an arbitrary exercise of deal-making and “ratables” chasing.

[A cited example:] New public sewer lines and individual or community on-lot systems are continuously opening new fringe areas to development even though substantial excess sewer capacity exist in older urban areas.

...state highway and bridge spending in Pennsylvania are flowing disproportionately into non-urban, outlying townships and away from older, more established parts of the state. ... State investments in non-urban, outlying townships outpaced spending in urban municipalities for all categories of spending on a per capita basis and for all categories but “operations” on an absolute basis. ... exactly the reverse of the regions’ respective population shares.

Any municipality wishing to redevelop its vacant and abandoned properties needs to know where the parcels are located, what condition they are in, who owns them, and other basic information. Unfortunately, such knowledge rarely exists. Most communities are still largely in the dark, in this regard, even though the advent of Geographic Information Systems and other technologies has encouraged some localities across the country to develop sophisticated parcel-based inventories of the land in their boundaries. Even if this information is collected, though, it often remains spotty, and is almost never made publicly available.

Many of Pennsylvania’s cities and towns are dominated by older, often historic, buildings that give them a distinctive charm most newer developments can’t rival. But while these structures remain some of the state’s greatest assets, they often present serious obstacles to the revitalization of older communities.

But not all older urban areas are tourist attractions, and even those that are can’t survive on visitor dollars alone. The fact is that over time preferences have changed, and many older buildings simply don’t accommodate today’s lifestyles and business needs. ... These trends are further exacerbated by outmoded building codes that thwart the rehabilitation or adaptive reuse of older structures. ... Renovation costs for historic structures are considerably higher than construction costs for new buildings, making unsubsidized redevelopment often infeasible.

Only by implementing policies and practices that facilitate redevelopment and market activity in older places will the Commonwealth begin to stem the deterioration that continues to threaten the state’s heritage.

Upgrade the State’s Own Planning Capacity
1. Create a state vision for economic competitiveness and development and then apply it across state programs.

2. Revive the State Planning Board and get serious about state-level interagency coordination.

3. Increase the incentives to plan.

4. Require that state and local infrastructure plans and development conform to land-use plans.

5. Require that local zoning ordinances conform to county and local comprehensive plans.

6. Promote quality in multi-municipal planning.

Currently, few states spend more per capita on economic development, and that’s a positive comparison—a sign of commitment to improving the future. However, the evidence suggests that this strong commitment needs to be focused. ... Consequently, Pennsylvania needs to reprioritize. Specifically, the Commonwealth should rethink its investment strategy so as to give first priority in its many development-related spending decisions to the state’s older, more established cities, rural and urban boroughs, and older suburbs.

1. Improve information disclosure. Strategy—and reform— require information. Yet Pennsylvania often lacks it. In fact, despite strides in several key departments, Harrisburg remains in many respects opaque when it comes to disclosing how its activities affect both land-use and economic performance.

2. Assess the spatial impact of state programs. Lacking the relevant information, the state really knows little about how its own activities actually affect land-use and development patterns ...

3. Make reinvestment the explicit priority. ... a clear and explicit state policy should soon require that all agencies give priority in funding and permitting decisions to infill projects and those involving the redevelopment, reuse, or revitalization of previously developed land.

5. Require consistency with county, local, or multimunicipal plans. Finally, the governor and General Assembly should insist that all state agencies conform their permitting decisions, infrastructure grants, business subsidy awards, and other investments to local and county planning preferences.


1. Make investment in education a priority. Despite its large number of colleges and universities, for example, Pennsylvania’s investment in higher education lags its competitors. The state’s 1997 per pupil spending for higher education ranked it 11th out of the 13 ...

2. Reform the workforce training system.

4. Appoint a task force to identify potential industry clusters and niches the state should cultivate.

7. Support manufacturing in older areas.

8. Invest in “consumption amenities.”No urban economic development strategy can ignore, finally, the important role that retail and services play in local economies. Restaurants, entertainment, shopping, hotels, and cultural institutions— as well as financial, business, and legal services—are essential components of thriving urban areas,

[Griff]

Man, I hate the Brookings Institute... and government planning... and asshats who think that PA consists of Philly and Pitt... and folks who think quality of life is dictated by tax receipts.

[russotto]

Me too. Plus the "older urban areas" that planners like so much -- like Norristown, Coatesville, Germantown, and Kensington. Sewer capacity or no sewer capacity, I don't want to live there.

[tw]

Originally posted by Griff
Man, I hate the Brookings Institute... and government planning... and asshats who think that PA consists of Philly and Pitt... and folks who think quality of life is dictated by tax receipts.

Little of that is part of the report. In fact, survey consisted mostly of studies in other areas not including Pittsburg. Maps from Chester and Montgomery county are provides as an example. Lancaster and Adams counties are more representative of why PA does not grow. Problems for PA are even found in the counties where most PA growth is found - Pike and Wayne - way up in the NE corner above Port Jervis.

One problem - too much government and no effective planning. Too many big highways in the Johnstown area and virtually none in areas such as the Schykill Expressway - where needed.

But then those who are the problem are saying the exact same thing. We like no planning and we hate the Brookings Institute because it would make us have to work for the people. Norristown, Coatsville, and Olney are what happens when politicians are more concerned about their power and relection than in coordinating plans.

[wolf]

Originally posted by Griff
Man, I hate the Brookings Institute... and government planning... and asshats who think that PA consists of Philly and Pitt... and folks who think quality of life is dictated by tax receipts.

I think you forgot to be pissed off by the "Alabama in between" comment that's usually unvoiced.

[alliburrah]

how the hell can you type so much about something so BORING?!?!?

[alliburrah]

which is more hilarious? happytreefriends.com or homestarrunner.com?

[jinx]

Soooo, what.... is everyone in the state just moving to Chester County then?

[zippyt]

I think you forgot to be pissed off by the "Alabama in between" comment that's usually unvoiced.

I lived in the city all my life untill a few years ago . It seems MOST city dwellers talk funny about the folks who live in the COUNTRY ( bunch of backwards ass goat fuckers , etc.......)
The weird thing is that most of those city folks would LOVE to have a place in the country( its soooo much more quiet and slow there ) , but most folks that grew up in the sticks want to live in the city ( there is NOTHING to do around here exept watch the propane trucks fill up ) .
Personaly I love the sticks , it IS quiet . When we lived in Memphis we were in the flight path of FEDEX , around 10pm it was like we lived on a freeway . If you ever get the chance go to memphis , if the nite is clear go to west memphis AR to the bridgeport road exit at about 9:45 the planes will start STACKING up . One will get clearence , dive to land , as another plane slides into its place , ALL FUCKING NITE LONG !!!!!

We can sit on our back patio in our swing sipping iced tea ( or beer ) , i will say "look its a jet " , all there is is a little silver sparkle WAY up in the sky with a contrail .

So call me a hick , or call me a red neck I don't care .

[tw]

Originally posted by zippyt
The weird thing is that most of those city folks would LOVE to have a place in the country

... which explains the largest growth in PA is Pike and Wayne counties. Essentially NYC suburbs. To live a life of luxery in the country, they commute four hours a day into NYC. Twice every day across NJ. OK, they are not home long enough to enjoy the country. But they have it anyway.

Therein lies some of the irony of that Brookings Institute study. The growth is mostly where people commute long distances to other states - where job growth does exist. Adams county commutes to MD. Wayne and Pike to NYC. Central PA is still owned by god and his chosen people - the unemployed - or those who work for the state. And then there is Erie PA.

BTW, is Pittsburgh on the verge of bankruptcy? I keep hearing rumors.

[Griff]

Originally posted by tw
... which explains the largest growth in PA is Pike and Wayne counties. Essentially NYC suburbs. To live a life of luxery in the country, they commute four hours a day into NYC. Twice every day across NJ. OK, they are not home long enough to enjoy the country. But they have it anyway.

Its not a life I would lead but their decision to live and commute does create different kinds of opportunities for full-time country folks. Commuters don't have time to maintain their country places so hillbillies do the work. Guys can do the quality construction work they want to and get paid at a good rate. Some of the grander buildings from earlier (mostly railroad) booms get saved. Organic farmers get a market. The economic distortion in land prices while annoying isn't too bad since the daily commuter can't live too far off the black top and lets face it the Dept of Agriculture doesn't want any serious farming to go on around here anyway.

Wayne county is called little Jersey and there is a cultural rift since transplanted urbanites don't always consider the history and traditions of the locales they move into but sometimes those traditions are sufficiently stupid that they need tweaking. The bottom line is if people felt they could make free decisions about housing etc... they'd stay closer to the cities. Of course, when they come out here and build their new McMansion next to a dairy they better not start talking zoning.

[elSicomoro]

I was watching a show on the Discovery Times channel that made me think of this thread--the idea of "congestion pricing."

As some of you may know, back in February, cars driving into central London during rush hour had to start paying a toll--roughly $8 a day. The most recent article I found about it (from the BBC in late October) states that traffic has dropped 30% in central London since the introduction of the toll. Over the summer, there was talk in Toronto of creating a similar plan. And a traffic writer for the New York Times advocates such an idea in New York City.

So, how do you feel about it? How would you feel about having to pay such a toll?

I would not support such a system in Philadelphia--at this point, traffic in Center City is not bad enough, IMO, to warrant such a thing. However, I would support turning some of the area highways into toll roads, particularly the Schuylkill Expressway (I-76). Obviously, there are a lot of concerns that would need to be addressed in doing something like this...but I think it could work if carefully planned.

[tw]

Originally posted by sycamore
I was watching a show on the Discovery Times channel that made me think of this thread--the idea of "congestion pricing."
...
So, how do you feel about it? How would you feel about having to pay such a toll?

I needed research in Drexel and Temple libraries. Congestion is so bad that taking the train is (by far) the best alternative. At least it used to be. SEPTA is no longer run by people from mass transit such as Giacomo and Roberts. Open parking places exist in stations. But only for monthly permits. The few 'public' spaces are said to be gone long before 7 AM. IOW I turned around and went home.

Giacomo once said every parking spot is a guaranteed customer. Now with bean counters running SEPTA into the earth, they want customers to commit to monthly contracts. Bull. Philly needs (also) people who come into town periodically and conveniently (such as by train). But instead, they would rather dump their potential customers onto the Schuykill.
As if it was not overcongested already.

Pricing of services such as parking, tolls, etc do just fine as congestion management tools. But instead, Philly (Septa) would rather make life cheaper by dumping everyone on the only (and fully congested) viaduct.

Is NYC congested? Apparently not. They lowered all tolls substantically.

So how could both towns make themselves (in the long term) more customer, employee, and tourist friendly? Mass transit must be convenient. For example, Giacomo and Roberts would have built a large regional station in Upper Gwyendd and Route 202. Many from the region park in this 'isolated from all residential areas' mass station. Then express right into Philly. Convenient. Faster than the Schuykill. And not done when those without foresight took over Septa.

Mass transit must be placed for extensions out from NYC to places like Wayne and Pike county from lines such a Gladstone or Bonton- plans today that define what will start being constructed in 20 years. Again, no such willpower to address the future of these congested regions. Would congestion pricing fix the real problem - no regional planning? I doubt it. However congestion pricing may eventually become the only alternative.

PA needs same planning for Philly to Reading and for Philly to Allentown. Again, no willpower.

Private highways priced higher in some locations. It is not known if these have been proven successful. After 10 years, there should be better evidence pro or con. Another example of congestion pricing.

Again, Septa now is the nation's worst system for on-time performance. Of course. Without knowing anything about those currently running Septa, it is a given - they don't come from mass transit. That is the type of management that could have made congesting pricing irrelevant and could help address the problems cited in the Brookings Institute. That management, instead, may make congestion pricing necessary. The alternative is simply more 'hollowing out' of PA.

[russotto]

Mass transit can't be made convenient for most in any area less dense than NYC; nearly door-to-door service without mode transfers is the standard, and you can't get it. Once you have to change from a car to a train, you've got to fight your way through congestion and park anyway, so you might as well drive in.

The Schuylkill Expressway sucks, but not so much as trying to fight through traffic to get to the R5, then park somewhere in Norristown and wait up to an hour for a train. Better, if possible to just change your hours so the Schuylkill is passable.

Of course, if you're NOT trying to get to or from Philly (or two intermediate points on the same lines), SEPTA fails utterly. Try to figure out how to get from Collegeville to King of Prussia via SEPTA sometime, for instance. It's not hard, just ugly.