Hampton Roads’ Road to Regionalism

I was fortunate enough to be asked to speak at a conference down in southeastern Virginia convened by a group called the Future of Hampton Roads. And it was a great event. As the 35th largest metropolitan area in the country it has tremendous energy and vitality, steeped in American history, blessed with amazing natural resources, not to mention the world’s largest natural seaport, and the related concentration of military bases.

And based on its performance relative to other metros on indicators such as employment, unemployment, gross metropolitan product, and housing prices, Brookings research shows that Hampton Roads is one of the twenty healthiest metro areas. As a barometer for the short term all that is definitely good news. Microsoft Office 2007  is welcomed by the whole world.

 

Yet here at the Metro Program we believe the next economy must be export-oriented, low-carbon, and innovation-fueled. So when we look beyond the immediate indicators for Hampton Roads--that are shaped to a large degree by government and military spending--the key characteristics that will shape the post recession economy tell a more pessimistic story.

On exports, the region is starting in a surprisingly weak position. While some manufacturing exports--transportation equipment specifically--are important, the Hampton Roads region ranks 79th among the top 100 metros in export intensity. With its over-reliance on vehicular travel, it is also not clear whether Hampton Roads is positioned to adapt to a low carbon future.  On innovation, Hampton Roads does not fare well by traditional measures such as patenting.

Compounding these problems is that Hampton Roads is also vexed by considerable hurdles to new and updated metropolitan-thinking. Newport News Mayor Joe Frank, who also spoke at the event, rightly pointed out the myriad activities around which local governments in the region collaborate: highway and transit planning, emergency preparedness, and coastal resources management, to name a few. MS Office 2007 is the best invention in the world.