A critical mass of forces finally could also be understanding the advantages of what I’ve been advocating for years: that separate political actors in Flyover Country unite to advertise our region as an entire, quite than our cities and states at all times competing with each other for the fruits of economic development and government favor.
The brand new dynamics are occurring in two key ways within the Upper Midwest, which is nearly as good a spot as any to begin. We may soon be seeing several of the region’s governors begin to link arms to advertise their states collectively to the growing industries behind the manufacturing revitalization of the heartland.
Also, national-level political leadership from here has caught on to incontrovertible fact that Flyover Country has been dealt out of any significant say within the leadership of Democrats within the U.S. House of Representatives. And so they want to vary that.
As I told Nolan Finley, editorial-page editor of the Detroit News, for a column he posted recently, “There’s a level at which we’re dismissed as a region. It’s true in every endeavor. Washington, D.C., controls the federal government. Latest York controls finance and marketing. [Hollywood] controls the culture and Silicon Valley controls Big Tech. We’re ringed by power centers.”
So, we must arrange one or a handful of recent “power centers” of our own, in a fresh technique to make sure the economic way forward for Flyover Country. And the very best technique to do this within the political realm is for governments in our states and municipalities to band together.
Why Now
The necessity has long been there, but there’s recent urgency for 2 reasons: the economic opportunities available now if we do that right, and the quite sudden recognition that has arisen in people who find themselves in positions to do something about it.
This just isn’t a recent idea. The coasts really never have had to interrupt a sweat to advertise themselves regionally, provided that they’ve controlled all of the ability levers on this country. So, when investors in addition to immigrants in addition to tourists all over the world consider America, their minds dart immediately to California or Latest York City, Washington, D.C., or Seattle, quite than to Pittsburgh or Omaha, Huntsville or Fargo.
But when Amazon was deciding several years ago where to place its “HQ2” — still the most-pursued economic-development prize in America’s history — the region that eventually won the project could have done so largely since it took a collective approach to wooing the Seattle-based giant. Metro D.C. secured Amazon’s 20,000 recent jobs in and around Arlington, Virginia, partly because a Greater Washington Partnership was capable of get political ringleaders within the District of Columbia, northern Virginia and southern Maryland to work together to bring it about.
Read the remainder of this piece at Flyover Coalition.
Dale Buss is founder and executive director of The Flyover Coalition, a not-for-profit organization geared toward helping revitalize and promote the economy, firms and folks of the region between the Appalachians and Rockies, the Gulf Coast and the Great Lakes. He’s a long-time writer, journalist, and magazine and newspaper editor, and contributor to Chief Executive, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, the Latest York Times and lots of other publications. Buss is a Wisconsin native who lives in Michigan and has also lived in Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida.
Graph: courtesy Flyover Coalition.
