The Outlook for the Metropolitan Area

Much of the discourse about regional andlocal economic development strategiesin the United States over the pasttwenty-five years has looked like asearch for general rules. Very few such rules have emerged,in part because—like all policy debates—there have beenlarge inputs of ideology and self-interest, as well as professionalinquiry, but in part because the appropriate strategiesreally are time- and place-specific. The strategies thatare right depend on, first, the diagnosis of the economicproblems and potential of that region or city at that timeand, second, an assessment of just what it is that interventioncan achieve in the circumstances of time and place.The authors of the other papers presented at this conferencedeal systematically and exhaustively with the fundamentalsof the New York region’s economic conditions and prospects,but it is essential that this paper start with an expositionof the economic setting for the discussion of policyintervention that comprises the bulk of the paper.[...]