when mayors are homeboys. we read about mayors white those that run into burning buildings and a pullout people that are unlike the mayor johnson that actually stopped a mugging on the streets of london. even if obama or bush wanted to, obviously the secret service would not let them get out of their leno and interfere with the mugging or run into a building and say something. it is a different kind of job that has a symbolic power. ..

right now the supreme court's poll numbers have gone way down but mayors and city counselors are still in the 70s and 80s. some would say that's the halo effect and you are exempt from your general critique but whatever you want to call it the fact is neighbors retain trust in democracy that has been largely lost elsewhere which means also our relationship to our own towns and cities and city councils and mayors bad as it may be as the last repository of trust in democracy in the united states and in western europe. and the collapse of trust in the democratic institutions is in

deep crisis because a democracy which loses the trust of its citizens is going to fail. the fact that trust is still greater means that at least in the city and town there is greater optimism. a lot of people like bloomberg and a lot of people don't like bloomberg but the thing about bloomberbloomber g as i saw last night in new york one someone who doesn't like bloomberg can go up to him and screamed in his ear and eventually the cops push him away. this guy who did it is a professional heckler but the fact is he k to the mayor and asked him a bunch of questions. you have all those good guys with you. try to do that with president obama or the president of china, with the president of france. you can't do it. so there is a completely different sense of our relationships to our mayors our city counselors are district representatives our borough presidents then we have with our national politicians and that

rekindles to some degree our faith in democracy because it's the sense that they are what politicians and democracies are supposed to be, citizens running for office. we become completely separated by the oligarchy from those red represent. so in that sense to mayors can make a fundamental difference. also interestingly we are doing a study on this. far more people terminate their political careers once they become mayor as mayor than anything else. if you run for the legislature in new york state or kentucky you will will probably going to be a congressman and then you run for governorship. it's a slippery slope upward. we fail upward as american politicians is we have seen so often that people who become mayors very often tend to end up to be mayors like mayor koch

head like mayor bloomberg had toyed with it but he will be here at its foundation. it's unlikely that we may have had aspirations the qualities that it takes to be mayor simply make it very hard to actually run for national office for etiology and big-time rhetoric and a big voice are what really make things happen. that also gives mayors the chance to solve real problems together. i just want to give you one or two examples of what mayors actually do and have done because it's really extraordinary the difference they play. let's say -- take the most crushing agenda on the world's agenda and -- climate change. the fact is if we did not find a way to deal with sustainability,

sustainable environment, carbon energy, the world as we know it whether governed by cities or nations states will largely finish because most of the crises we face in democracy and water supplies and the rising oceans and the shift of populations and immigration go directly back to the problem of ecology. we have watched nation-states sit by while all of those tipping points whether it's two degrees centigrade with the raising of the atmosphere, whether it's 350 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere are bypassed to maaco up and to two degrees centigrade that the temperature has gone gone up and it's already well past 350, up to 420 and climbing and states have made an awful lot of noise and have done almost nothing.

up next bruce katz and jennifer bradley at the brookings institutions metropolitan policy program argue that american cities are to devising solutions to political and social issues at the federal government won't address. the authors discuss their ideas with anthony williams former mayor of washington d.c.. on a panel moderated by gwen ifill senior correspondent for the "pbs newshour." this is just under one hour. [applause]

>> i welcome you tonight and i thought to myself i know i've been to this building before and i'm trying to remember why. my father was an african methodist episcopal preacher. i attended this church when it was an ame church and now he turned it back into -- and that's just fine. i was telling jennifer advance that this kind of thing is my sweet spot. as you can tell by my resume and i don't know who started that. i covered the white house, congress and all these big-time beats but the sweet spot for me is covering local and state government. that is where the work i've done and that is where people answered your questions when you ask them as opposed to what happened to washington so frequently and people were accountable and simply for what they did and did not do to the people who elected them. that is something that doesn't seem to happen as much on the federal level. so that is the leaping off point for the conversation we are going to have tonight.

we are going to speak among ourselves for a while as if you are not even here and then we are going to turn the questions over to you. so start thinking now of really smart ones. there were two microphones in in the aisles in a preordained moment i will summon you and we will just keep rocking and rolling until they kick us out. i am joined by fabulous panel of people i've known for a long time and people who control my taxation. [laughter] bruce katz to my immediate left is vice president of the brookings institution and founding director of the policy program and co-author of the book we are talking about tonight. he regularly advises federal state local leaders on policy reforms that advance the cause of competitiveness of metropolitan areas. after the 2000 election heat -- housing and urban issues transitioning to present a bomb and served as a senior adviser to the secretary of housing and

urban development shaun donovan for the first 100 days and then he got out. [laughter] jennifer bradley is a fellow at the brookings policy program and also the co-author of the book. a perking shoes were quick sense of family challenges and opportuniopportuni ties of older industrial cities and has co-authored major economic turnaround strategies from ohio and michigan. as an attorney she has co-authored supreme court amicus brief cases that affirm the constitutional powers of local government and to my far left his former mayor of columbia from -- anthony williams who is now as you heard the ceo of the federal city council which focuses on creative and administrative talent in washington's business and professional leaders and getting them to focus on the major problems facing the district. during his two terms as mayor he restored finances. he improved his governance lower taxes invested in the infrastructure and human services.

before his election he served as the chief financial officer for the district. so this is an important panel. these are people who spend a lot of time thinking about just the things we are going to talk about now for the next little while. the book as you will see or if you have purchased you have gotten your tickets when he walked in cover a few points but i want to read one paragraph that caught my eye and ask bruce to address it. the metropolitan revolution is not only about the local and traditional. it's also fairly intensive -- of modern life spun by technology and globalization. we are living in a disruptive moment that worships speed, extols collaboration rewards customization demands differentiation -- though i love all that. [laughter] and champions integrated thinking and to master the complexities of economies and

societies. the metropolitan -- the "the metropolitan revolution" is like our era. entrepreneurial rather than bureaucratic, networked rather than hierarchical. so there is a revolution underway bruce and it provides an uprising who are we rising up against? >> what that paragraph is by -- my jerry mcguire moment by the way. i think i wrote that out of a playwright. jennifer and i chose this. we went to merriam-webster and looked at revolution one of the definitions of revolution is a radical change in the way you think about things. from an early age we have been taught in this country that we have the president and vice president and we have congress sitting on top of our system and they are sort of raining down resources. they work with their

co-sovereigns this state government the union of states to sort of set the framework. i think our main thesis here is that is really not how we function or operate as an economy or society anymore. we face major challenges today, we all know that at the places that are basically powering us both that are stepping up that are doing the hard work to bring jobs and make this economy more prosperous in our community more prosperous is -- and that's because they are the engines of our economy. we look at the top mattress and a metropolitan policy and they sit on one-eighth of our land mass. they are two-thirds of our population. they are three-quarters of our gdp and on every single indicator that letter that matters human capital innovation , there are 75, 80, it

85, 90% of the nation share. for all intensive purposes we do not have an american economy. what we have is a network of metropolitan economies run by networks of leaders, not just governments but cities, university business labor environmental. they are all-powerful and they are all powerful in their own but when they come together they can be grand -- for their places and for the country. that's the revolution. change happens where you live in this decade and frankly and urban age in a metropolitan century in the united states and abroad. that's the way this country will power itself. see jennifer seems the challenge here is when they come together. that seems like it's harder than it sounds. so be it is that we have found that metropolitan areas under functional metropolitan areas understand that it's worth it. in the book we tell the story of northeast ohio and we stayed

northeast ohio even though it really doesn't roll off the tongue rather than saying cleveland or akron or canton or youngstown because those for metropolitan areas understood that individually they couldn't really make it dent on the world stage not when they are competing with bangalore and shanghai and the megametropolitan areas of the rising nations. so they understood that they are interlinked economically. cleveland can't flourish if other places around that are sinking so they got a group of foundations and these communities got together and they said what can we do to change our economy? the decline of manufacturing throughout the 70s and 80s really hit them hard. these foundations that we have been funding arts and culture and social issues. none of that is going to matter and less people have jobs. so they invested in ways to connect their small and medium-sized manufacturers to new suppliers and new

industries. they figured out how to harness the benefit, not the benefits but the institution like the cleveland clinic, lake summit health systems in akron to manufacture the entrepreneurs who wanted to take the ideas being generated in these institutions and make them into usable products. so it is a hard thing to do but the benefits are profound. so again in northeast ohio we have seen $10 billion in economic investment. most recently the obama administration chose to put one of its new manufacturing innovation institutes around 3-d printing which has the potential to completely revolutionize manufacturing in this country. >> whose investment are you talking about? government investment, private investment? >> it's been a mix of those. there have been companies started. there are about $330 million in payroll, several thousand new jobs. some of it is the private

sector. some of it as i said as the federal government saying wow you guys really have your together and we can check a lot of boxes if we give you something because its congressional districts coming together. you have the state acting intelligently to support them. places that work together tend to attract good things. we see that across the country. we see it in denver and that's another chapter in the book. yeah is hard but a lot of the things that just need to do to get their act together as mayor williams knows, if not for the fainthearted but if you set your mind to it you can have a great return on on investment and that's what we have to show people. that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and a reward. >> mayor williams is this something that you have experience underway versus a brand-new thing? >> in my experience is targeted underway. another example of this is my job as federal federal city council and where founded on

the -- is a pro-civil rights pro bono businesses who wanted to projects for major reach and had a big impact when they were patterned on the allegheny conference which is kind of what they are talking about. it turns out the allegheny conference moving along in pittsburgh babysit and this deal collapses. they basically have to resuscitate the economy in pittsburgh and leading that effort really was the mayor -- wasn't the merrill podey played a big role. leading that would have been a nongovernmental plate player leader. in this case it was jim moore of pnc who brought together carnegie mellon, pit, university of pittsburgh and pittsburgh philanthropies which are used in pittsburgh on a recovery strategy. reorganizing a business community from things that are talked about in the book.

it's happened elsewhere. while it hasn't happened in a spectacular way here because we are kind of peculiar that the federal government is here and actually is our corporate presence in a way. i would argue that in 1997 with the revitalizrevitaliz ation act under president the clinton was an example of the business leadership nonprofit leadership working with the federal government as a corporate player on a recovery strategy for the city and it's turned out pretty well. see what would you say mr. mayor what would you identifies the major hurdles for municipalities trying to embrace this? obviously be watching the sets of challenges but in general if the mayor is listening to this on c-span and says that's a great idea, and want to do that, what are the biggest problems he faces right away, or she? >> a lot of people distinguished leaders between the advocate manner and the campaigning mayor and think of the great epic of

mayors. at its best marion barry was an advocate mayor and then what are called the political although this is kind of stereotype but for purposes of argument technocratic mayors. it turns out that these mayors who are advocating and these mayors who are kind of running things really actually need a bland. what do i mean by that? 70% of the time you really do the blocking and run your city but you've got to do more than that. you've got to lead this network that they are talking about. i think there are many players in this network and i would argue that it's the mayor's job or could be the county executive, depends on the situation, it's your job to lead this this network in an arc to lead this network you have to pick up two things. one yet to make sure you are paying attention because if you are not answering anyone's phone no one will take you seriously

and two if you want to believe this network you have a limited bandwidth. you can only really be gone one or two or three things. you can go to the network and say okay i have an 80 priority program. no, you have to have one, two or three things. if you look in the book can you talk about just today mayor bloomberg -- >> applied sciences. >> it wasn't 40 things, it was one thing to harness all these together. >> let me ask first bruce to tell us, i think it's better for us -- for everybody here is going to go home and read the book assuming you haven't yet. examples, tell us about los angeles. >> so los angeles at the beginning of the recession, business the union leaders go to the voters to pass what was called measure auer and half sales tax to raise $40 billion over 30 years to build out

transit through their road networking. we all know what l.a. looks like. congested to the max. at the beginning of the recession, so villaraigosa mayor of los angeles basically looks into this and says you know what? we are going to raise all this money over 30 years but if we can accelerate the construction and compress it into 10 years we would basically create 160,000 jobs now. this was a construction job. it's a recession, what a brilliant way to do this. okay i've got to find some innovative finance. the chinese are perhaps we can change some federal laws, innovative finance national government that wasn't quite working quite well but we can change it so it fits the purpose here and other parts of the united states. so l.a. tried to do this by themselves but that sort of smacks of an earmark, so what's

mayor villaraigosa then did was to pull together networks of other cities, mayors, business leaders union civic universities. let's all come together. at some point in time washington will pass a reform bill and as that bill was going through the reform is particularly innovative finance program and now they are off to the races. doubt this to me is the new federalism. cities and of a, cities lead, and then the federal government comes behind in the service of their vision and the service of their priorities. it's not a one-size-fits-all coming down from smart technocrats. it's people like the place where the economy and society meet doing smart and strategic things and saying you know what federal government, here is a way where we can leverage what we are doing at this level.

>> lets talk about federalism and tell us about denver. >> denver is a great example of what we are talking about a little bit earlier about how a place can come together, again tax itself with the things it needs. denver in the 1970s was a typical metropolitan area. you had county leaders and suburban leaders fighting with the city of denver. nobody got along. there were a lot of racial challenges around school immigration. the city and suburbs had this kind of enemy feeling about each other. the economy, the energy economy in colorado nosedives in the 80s. business leaders got the message really quickly that denver wasn't an isolated economy. it's not that denver was going to to do do poorly played over or centennial are some of the other counties were going to do really well. so they got together in the business leader said, what if we were, business attraction

strategy that brought companies to the whole denver region and we are going to be agnostic about whether they locate in denver or if whether they located one of the towns and as mayor williams will tell you that is a bit like lindsey graham and barney frank having a taxation agenda that they can also get behind. this kind of thing doesn't happen. but it does happen in denver and then the politicians saw what was going on in the business community and the business community said a to the politicians are you going to get on this train or are you not? the next big initiative was to build a first-class transit system in denver to kind of give people the impression that denver was a world-class city. it was in a cow town in the middle of nowhere and that was successful. the example that denver gives a thing for this new federalism is that political collaboration and cooperation is possible.

and it's not anything particularly heroic. it involves one mayor going out for steaks and beer with a mayor and a neighboring jurisdiction in saying i will come to you. you don't have to come to me, i will go to you. it involved me are celebrating each other's inauguration. we don't have that happening in washington and one of the reasons that the subtitle of the book is how cities and metros are fixing our broken politics and fragile economies is metros provide an example of people who want to get things done. federalism is a system that is supposed to facilitate getting things done so we think people in washington can take a look at what's happening out there and say if they can do it we can do it. >> as a recovering politician mr. mayor, let's talk about that because that seems to be the political elephant in the room

,-com,-com ma the big hurdle to get past. the federal government we all know is that a 10% approval rating at this point. local governments may be more, don't know. >> 15. >> whoa. [laughter] and headed down. how do you get past that other than to be severe? there something more profound going on here about public attitudes towards government. >> my attitude was he can't get everybody to love everybody but you can get people to respect one another. here in washington d.c. we think if we got people to respect each other more, think what's happening on the anacostia river. the initiative we started to get the focus of the country off of the mall. the other one was the engine to diversify our economy. the real reason was i remember was running for mayor and

everybody asked me what he going to do to bring the city together? i couldn't really see having conferences and i couldn't see giving great speeches because i don't do that. what we are going to do is we are going to have a project that is real to everybody and meaningful to everyone and that anyone can get their hands on and work on and feel a sense of ownership. i think that is what the anacostia has been about. i think when you're at a local level and this is their point of view, when you are the local level you are more likely to find projects like that. when you're at the federal level at 60000 feet it's very hard to find a project that is tangible concrete that people on the local level on a committee can see. at the city level at that scale you can see it and touch it and get involved in it and that gives something very important. i think this is implicit in what they are saying. the local level there is a sense of urgency because if this thisa neighborhood meeting and i come to this neighborhood meeting you basically are holding me responsible for everything

except maybe the war, maybe social security. other than that i am responsible for everything. you've got to deliver and that is what you are saying. >> does that mean bruce federal government is completely irrelevant? >> i don't think it's relevant at all but in our view it really needs to service those places that are the engines of the economy and the center of trade and investment frankly the front lines of demographic transformation and climate change. the question we look at now in the 21st century is what kind of federal government do we need our senses they need to be in the service -- the. >> but how? it sounds like a good idea. >> it's really two things. the first thing is do what cities and metros can't do it we don't want cities and metros making sure our -- or securing our borders are setting up a common immigration policy with.

where frankly conducting trade deals that we need a national government in a common market of common rules. that's one of the strengths of united states compared to all of our other -- around the world. this is really the los angeles case, cities and metros are closer to their problems and the specific special assets they have in their economy. what phoenix makes in its global brand is different from pittsburgh and the same with amber in detroit and therefore the kinds of investments they make is the industry structure is different. they have different legacies from private generations. the kind of -- they have to make a different. there for what meaning is the federal government that really can be in the service of its district with metropolitan issues and priorities, right? is not about setting a one-size-fits-all in washington d.c.. it doesn't work.

this is an incredibly large variegated diverse society and economy and what we should do is treasure those and allow them all to flourish and allow different places to realize it. >> let me give an example of where i can see a fly in the ointment jennifer. immigration you just mentioned which is something that is the federal government responsibility police the borders. we are really having a hard time with that right now in washington. assume immigration and what the federal lassar have a direct effect on locality in a metro or city their ability to attract workers and their ability to keep workers and their ability to fund their schools and support their schools. with the federal government does or does not do their can make it hard for a local -- to innovate. >> that's true but what we are seeing over and over again is that metros aren't waiting for a federal solution. as bruce likes to say all the time federal government hasn't

immigration policy but metropolitan areas have been immigrant policy because whatever the federal game is their immigrants living in metropolitan areas. in fact about 85% of the foreign-born in the country live in the top 100 metropolitan areas. so you take a place like houston which is the most diverse city in the united states, more diverse than new york, more diverse than los angeles. their people welcome -- yeah, houston. houston has the vietnamese, the iranians, bosnian. there is an amazing place in houston called neighborhood cities. >> i see a story in this. last go. >> there is always a story. the diversity of houston has helped these immigrants coming here, some with a lot of skills and some of a lot of scars and get them into education for their kids. they get them into the banking center -- the system.

people in houston now this is the future of houston's economy. these people are here to work and if they can get into the mainstream systems their contributions will really resonate. since all stories have to have fat, the tax returns that neighborhood centers prepare for these immigrants and other low income people bring $41 million a year back into the houston economy. the immigrants are a source of income and energy there so why would a metropolitan put out a close on when they can put out a welcome sign and get all those benefits? >> if you are in houston and you have enlightened populism leadership and people are trying to figure out a way to bridge that, that's great. if you are detroit or you are washington d.c. you have some challenges in governance, how do you get around that? where does that vision come from? where does the execution come

from? [inaudible] >> i think every city has its challenges. i think detroit has clearly got big problems but it's also got tremendous opportunities because it's kind of like the situation we faced, remember y2k? we didn't have a big y2k problem because we didn't have that many computers. [laughter] >> that's her opportunity. >> so you can leapfrog a lot of the mistakes and i think that's the problem that detroit has is to leapfrog a lot of the mistakes and the problems that other people i faced to create new solutions where you have yeah and i think this is your point again. the government may be the rest that the community is not the government. the government is important. it's indispensable but it's not the whole thing and i think the

same thing applies here to washington d.c.. the government is important that the leadership includes but is broader and more conference event government. >> detroit is a really interesting case because it's a very large city. it's 138 square miles if you take manhattan and a lot of are smaller cities and put them all in that space. it used to be 2 million now at 700,000 but it's a town of -- it's a tale of two cities. if you go into the seven square miles that come off of the detroit river. you have got downtown, great architecture. you go to the corner and then you've got midtown. you have weighed state university and detroit medical campus. you have got a lot of civic and local activists who have been

working on this for the past 15 or 20 years and finally i think you're getting to a tipping point. private investment and philip round pick investment in northeast ohio is very smart and should teach it. $100 million to basically support economic revival. what happens? small batch manufacturing is coming to detroit. watches are being made in the shadow of integrative studies because they have the industrial engineers. there is a waste-to-energy center so they are fueling energy and to make town detroit. detroit will rise at its core and will rise as they did with your intervention, by bringing effectiveness and efficiency back to government. but it will primarily revive

because private and civic -- >> bruce, this is and was the case here. you are trying to make these changes. it's not -- [inaudible] every inefficiency is a constituency. [laughter] >> that's my point. >> as you know glenn, if i'm living a poor neighborhood, you think of urban history, became her a lot of cities come you came through urban renewal. years of neglect and nights were coming and with a new plan to improve my neighborhood. how am i supposed to buy into that? >> especially when the political corruption -- >> i think it really gets back to a different idea for kind of economy we want. this gets that to some

individual thoughts. the prerecession economy in this country was essentially characterized by -- [inaudible] if you said what is your economic development strategy, it was we are going to extend their convention center. we are building a new performing arts center. i think what we are seeing in the aftermath of this recession particularly in the metropolitan is a different vision of the economy that we want to build that works for working families and in a place like detroit i think, when you think about detroit what you think about? you think about auto, you think about engineering, you think about innovation and manufacturing innovation, something we have forgotten this country. if we can renew our economy without vision than a lot of these kids coming into high

school and they are great examples of this all over this country, coming to high school third-grade reading fifth-grade math within four years -- weiss to call this -- within four years we will have the skills and credentials to get those kinds of jobs. we have got to rethink the kind of economy we want to have and the notion that we are going to be a post-industrial economy where was okay for us to generate ideas and have someone else actually did the manufacturing, that was wrong. that was misguided and i think postrecession and the cities and metropolitan areas are going back to the fundamentals. >> but you skipped past what you see in the title of your book. how cities and metros are fixing our broken politics and fragile economies. how does this fix the broken policies which in themselves can stop all of this debt in the tax? >> i think the answer is something that mayor williams alluded to which his networks. the stuff he talked about was when government came in, often

not the local government but the federal government and imposed something on people in particular neighborhoods with a real blindness to as bruce was saying the strength, the differences, what made those neighborhood special. they recently are so hopeful about the economy and politics in the changes we see how this works through networks so again it's philanthropies, its small-business leaders, its religious leaders, it's civic leaders. it's people who are themselves heart of the fabric of the neighborhoods. a lot of the efforts in detroit have not moved along as quickly as some people have wanted them to but that is because people are taking the time to explain policy change. people are taking the time to get buy-in from the neighborhoods. that is not a really efficient way to work. it's not something you can sort of start in 2013 and by 2015 we are done. this is the new politics that is

going to make this a durable and truly replicable revolution. it's people understanding that they are the change. change is happening in their places and they can be a part of it as opposed to just kind of waiting as they set for policy to drop from the sky and either land on their head and question mark be some kind of benefit. they are the ones who are in fact making policy and making change in their places. >> lets assume for a moment that it's possible. in some wonderful way this will organize itself and people will rise up and become problems and without information,. >> the federal government swings behind but if we are going to set up a dichotomy and i'm betting on people and institutions and networks in metros and you're betting on the federal government i would say i think i have a much better bet.

>> let me ask you about the next economy. they write about how technology and globalization is key or harnessing that in some whiskey to this. how do you define that? >> without reading this book that is written, -- see you have been hanging out with us. >> is kind of confused. bruce had a conference to talk about things with the united states in metros and there were local government types like me there and academic and business people. that is how people think and how they do things. if you are running a pittsburgher youngstown or cleveland or whatever or antonio in l.a. then you are thinking how does my region compete in a global economy? you may be thinking how can i compete at or by consuming more than building a better stadium

and this and that and they get that point that you understand intuitively that your region is competing on this global economy. think about it ,-com,-com, when you go to beijing when people ask you where you've are from whether you are from fairfax or prince william or d.c. or prince george's you are going to say i'm from washington d.c. because that's how you think about the region and the world. >> we only have a few minutes before he turned the microphones open so organize those questions to kasai morrill taskmaster about keeping my point. what role does leadership play in this and who are the leaders that we are looking for to organize this idea, this revolution? we kind of need a paul revere. >> well you know leadership is absolutely critical and frankly when you have an elected official or you have mayor bloomberg or rahm emanuel or villaraigosa it's wonderful to have an elected official who frankly uses their informal

ability to convene constituencies and networks across sectors and disciplines and across jurisdictions and across ideology. if you don't have that and frankly there many parts of this country that don't have that leadership in their elected officials, their other leaders. look around the metro. it could be the head of the university. it could be the head of the business association. it could be philanthropy. it could be people who are in middle management or community associations. my sense is leadership, the united states is rich in leadership and particularly in our cities and metropolitan areas which tend to put place of her party but we have got to basic we stop stopped thinking about the celebrity leader or the one later. we have to really think about these networks. our stories very much are really about networks and many of them are about the absence of elected

leadership. >> we actually call this one of the chapters in the book is called the post-hero economy. bruce and i would go into place after place and they would say we are doing all the stuff with so we can get the next steve jobs or the next michael dell and we thought a right he we will come back when he is here. we wanted to get people to understand that you can't wait for one charismatic leader when you are losing jobs or your schools are not in good shape. it really is up to people to use the resources at hand. >> it's kind of like the post racial policies that really don't exist but is it also something where it has to transcend politics whatever form this politics takes even if it's not one person in? >> i think it goes back to what mayor williams was saying earlier about organizing around anacostia. i think it takes setting a vision. if you have something that different constituents see or

different groups in your community can galvanize around than there is going to be a leader that emerges and the project itself becomes kind of an organizing mechanism. it's not just sort of these swarms of people looking for something to do. if you have got in issue that can crystallize things that is what you have to get moving. there's politics and there is politics. there is electoral politics but there is also politics as a way to get things done as interactions with people and we want people to understand the power of that as much as the power of politicians. >> i have one more question for the mayor and please start lining up to the microphone for your questions. if you you were here on a wednesday night and you are interested in change in governance and transformation on a grand scale you could be easily appointed by the ability to affect that change. what do you say to people who

come to you and say you know i don't think it's possible to make this work. >> if you think is it possible to make it work, so possible to move the levers of traditional command-and-control government as broken as it sometimes is and is credited as it sometimes is i would say yeah you were great but if you are thinking of getting something done as you have to get government to do a little, not everything but a little by all these little players than you are going to get more people involved and you're going to create a sense of urgency that will motivate the government and get its act together. >> that's a great answer. we are going to ask you to keep her questions as tiger is possible and if not i will rephrase them for you and it may not be what you intended. and i'm going to try to get in as many questions as we can. >> hi i am rebecca and my question is with him baltimore

city so one jurisdiction there is a 20 year difference in life expectancy at earth within baltimore city, just one city so how does the concept you're introducing your book begin to address and it's due to any number of issues access to health care violence -- so how do you, the concepts that you introduced, addressed that issue. >> there are so many things underway united states that are really trying to get at this and it's really happening for the local and metropolitan level. if you go to san antonio the mayor puts forward a referendum. this is the day, i mean that network, around we will make pre-k education available to everyone in our community because we all know that the federal headstart program does not cover it. even though we think about it, it's not. so it passes.

one-eighth of the sales tax, that's kind of the better in the future. it's probably not talk about in the same theoretical cons direct but it's basically the community saying our children are going to succeed and is within our power in our community make that happen. that is what we are trying to do. we can talk about some transformative initiatives around infrastructure or high-level innovation but i think frankly when we really think about what we need in this country is an unleashing of transformation around these people who have been left behind. if any country can do it it's ours. we are wealthy and we are wealthy across many sectors in many disciplines and many parts of our society. >> next question. say i love this. thank thank you, i am lengthy and i'm from baltimore. i would like to hear what you

have to say about the idea of something as basic as transit that will connect the cities around washington like also more in richmond and frederick and annapolis. can you talk about this? >> mr. mayor? >> something that can connect the different communities? >> transit, yeah. >> you need to come to the microphone. >> one of the things we are working on on the faces of the network, the project of ours is union station. it's not just union station as you understand it in the 1900s but it's really picking up the union station is a kind of multijurisdictional metro if you will complex that involves maryland and virginia and different places in the district including union station and getting everybody on a state and regional basis to focus on a

major set of transportation improvements and everybody can see linking those cities in those communities with betterment. that's a spectacular example i think. >> i am with the american public transportation association. >> i did not arrange this. >> i appreciate the dialogue. >> it's a conspiracy or we can see. >> there's a good discussion in the book and so far in the dialogue. thinking in political terms it's not yet been stated that likely can assume that the concept of the metro revolution metro economies is going to bring benefit to the rural and nonurban areas as well because of the market is going to create for manufactured goods, products, agriculture so thinking beyond the choice is a winner for everybody? >> absolutely. we couldn't have said it better ourselves although we tried in the book. if you take example of washington state about a billion dollars worth of apple is

growing in one part of washington go through the port of seattle so rural areas in washington whether they want to admit it or not have a lot invested in seattle's ability to open up markets to connect. rural and metro are thought of as these absolute opposites but in fact a lot of rural people actually live on the edges of metropolitan areas. they work and metropolitan areas. their kids go to school or that doctor in metropolitan areas. our country is much more metropolitan than we think. it in 47 out of 50 states and that the economy is driven by metropolitan areas so rural residents need strong metros again for their markets and for their opportunities. >> thank you. >> hi my name is nick and i'm from los angeles. i have a masters degree and thank you so much for worrying

about los angeles. as you alluded do we need more public participation in order to set the system however i feel like within los angeles itself we do have a neighborhood council system setup that allows citizens to really involve themselves but the problem is they don't know what they are doing because of a lot of them don't have experience. they don't know how to to wisely invests it in as a result that department has no respect regardless if they have the opportunity to talk with the mayor. >> it's an interesting point which is what happens if people want to change and they have these great ideas and they don't have a clue -- >> how do you go about creating for a of federal -- that are political terms entrepreneurial service. >> the mayor went through this obviously in washington d.c.. i think what we find is democracy works at multiple levels and at the community

level or the district level what generally begins to spark purses the patient is a crisis or an urgency or it could be the state of the schools or could be the of fresh food which unfortunately is a major issue in many parts of this country. something that sparks a group of people within the community to say we are going to have to do something. this is classic quintessential american problem-solving. and when you have structures like that in l.a., the key is to try to channel it. it's almost like going back to what you said, he can do everything but if you can resolve one problem and if you do it anyway words tangible where people can feel it and tasted literally with the fresh fruit than it can begin to expand to other issues. that is what i think is the power of the revolution. you know denver got hooked on problem-solving, literally

hooked because they started with culture and then they looked at at the airport and then they went to light rail. they have just launched a new space cluster because they see space as an advancement that they can compete with and that is what we are talking about. problem solving among people and among networks, government dean part of it. >> i was going to say problem-solving allows you to confront reality. in a nonpatronizing way which helps promote education of their people because a problem a lot of politicians have is you tend to think a consultation engagement with citizens like a waiter at the restaurant it comes in to tell you about their specials on the wine list, it's informative but it's not really substantive. it's not like let's talk about the wines. if the restaurant is burning down the need to know this. there are choices.

you need to tell people the brutal reality and give some concrete ways to fix fix it fixi think people will rise to the occasion. [applause] >> hi sam medlock. thank you for your work. i misled policy wonk. i appreciate it very much -- >> you are coming to the right place. >> and apparently the right time. i appreciate dinner for the reference to hurricane sandy and disasters in other parts of rove show no signs of abating. we in this country national flood policy and yet or even a federal flood policy for that matter and yet major catastrophic flood disasters are viewed as being a federal problem. so two questions, what is the role of the federal government in dealing with major flood disasters, setting aside climate impacts. we know those are coming and things are going to get worse. we have a flood problem so what is the role of federal government in dealing with that and what is the role and two are

the big leaders, those matcher regions that d.c. that are not waiting for federal leadership from washington on this issue? >> i can coax it into one question, who is in charge and if they are not in charge who should be? >> i think where exley seeing this work out right now in new york and new jersey. in a way this is an interesting kind of federalism because the federal government comes in after disaster, a 100 year storm happening every two years. it's not a think secret and they basically invest substantial amounts of money but what is happening now and what is really remarkable is the city, the suburban municipalities, the state, they are beginning to change the rules around land use, around zoning and around building codes. how do you build resilient infrastructure? how do you anticipate what we all know is happening in the federal government is beginning to change how they function.

agencies are beginning to integrate and operate together so i think hurricane sandy is a lesson like katrina was a lesson and it takes a while to absorb the notion that this is just going to keep happening. we all know what the definition of insanity is and i don't need to repeat it. doing the same thing again and again and again. i think we are going to see different levels of government with different responsibilities come together to build more resilient places. >> that's something that requires government. >> but our book is absolutely not anti-government. one of the things we have struggled with this when we say for example that the federal government can't do everything. people here that is the federal government can't do anything and that's not what we are talking about. our book explained that government is a very important player in these networks that we see.

it's not the only player and we think that's a profoundly hopeful message because when the federal government is broken or when a sometimes happen and mayor is under indictment or your local political -- >> it happens. [laughter] >> or when your local political system has broken down that doesn't mean that any particular place is just stymied and it's on hold. >> i would argue how for post-katrina new orleans is not necessarily -- years later. >> amy lu who is sitting in the audience spent an enormous amount of time in new orleans. i think it is a very checkered story but some things have worked remarkably well. it almost goes back to what you said about detroit. we had to innovate. you have to do things that were really quite different.

things were so stark in that city in that region in terms of poverty and segregation, that things have to change that may have changed with regards to that. >> we could spend the whole night talking about katrina and that would be bad for all of you because we would never get back to the questions. ..