Well, maybe that's not entirely positive.
At any rate, I wanted to point out that our friends at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program have been blogging lately, under the auspices of The New Republic's Web site.
Their group blog, called The Avenue, naturally offers notices about Brookings Metro's own reports. But it also offers plenty of tips and thoughts about studies from elsewhere and news of interest to the policy program's central mission of promoting and strengthening metropolit an regions.
For instance, transportation maven Rob Puentes linked Monday to a speech U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood gave in Chicago earlier this month calling for regional transportation spending. LaHood touted the idea of sending federal dollars directly to local governments, bypassing state DOTs, in order to encourage and foster metropolitan planning and development.
We also want to allow counties and cities to work together to develop regional plans reflecting both regional and national priorities. Then we'd fund them directly. The fact is, metro areas hold over 80 percent of the U.S. population. They're major centers of economic activity. And they account for most of the congestion and greenhouse-gas emissions.
If you're interested in metros or the issues that are important to them -- immigration, housing, economic activity, federal policy, etc., etc. -- you'll want to bookmark and check The Avenue.
(I immodestly note that Sarah Rahman was kind enough to link to my current cover story on Shelby County, Tennessee, Mayor AC Wharton Jr. But I was planning to tout The Avenue before I knew we would be engaging in circular linking.)
