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'Blue Land' and 'Red Land'

When David Rusk sees blue, he typically also sees red. It's not that Rusk is visually impaired, it's a way of looking at the disparate poverty statistics and tax capacities of cities and suburbs  across the country — where  boundaries of political jurisdiction often separate the good life from the not-so-good life.

Also, Rusk has been hanging around too much with Myron Orfield, author of American Metropolitics: The New Suburban Reality. Orfield, who with Tom Luce authored  Wisconsin Metropatterns, portrays the fiscal and social health of the nation's metropolitan areas with maps. The wealthiest areas end up Navy blue, and the poorest communities show up in red. In between are various shades of orange and light blue.

Rusk says the way for a metropolitan area to pull itself up by the bootstraps — and change some of that red to blue — is to play the "outside game" instead of the "inside game."  He's author of Inside Game/Outside Game: Winning Strategies for Saving Urban America.

Playing the "outside game," Rusk says, recognizes that the problems of lagging communities are caused by developments outside their boundaries, and demands a strategy that recognizes those outside factors rather than just trying to cope with the poverty and neighborhood decline those outside developments engender within the orange or red communities. 

Rusk described Milwaukee's situation in a 2001 speech to area leaders, co-sponsored by the Intergovernmental Cooperation Council of Milwaukee County and the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities:

From Orfield & Luce,
Wisconsin Metropatterns:

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Tax Capacity, Metro Milwaukee

 The City of Milwaukee – Definitely Red Land

In 1998, the city of Milwaukee had 36% of the region’s households, but only 20% of the region’s local tax capacity. Its local tax capacity was only $864 per household – only 37% of the regional average and the lowest of any city or town. Moreover, the city’s fiscal challenges were compounded by the tremendous concentration of poverty within Milwaukee. With, as I noted above, only 36% of the region’s households, the city had to try to meet the many needs of
76% of the region’s poor households.

What literally saved Milwaukee was state aid. Wisconsin has one of the nation’s largest programs of state aid for municipalities. It is also one of the best in terms of equalizing resources between poorer and richer communities. In 1998, Milwaukee received state aid equivalent to $1,350 per household – larger than the revenues generated by its local tax base and equal to 61% of all revenues from taxes.

Without state aid, in my judgment, Milwaukee could not possibly have maintained its AA credit rating. In fact, it would have been one of the most fiscally distressed cities in the nation. Despite some heartening signs of revival, like the new townhouses along the bluffs and converted downtown loft apartments, the city of Milwaukee is definitely a part of Red Land. (emphasis added)

Rusk's prescription for the Milwaukee metropolitan area, and indeed metropolitan areas across the country: change the rules of the game:

  1. Play the "outside game" instead of the "inside game."

  2. Manage growth regionally. In the 1990s, Rusk said, the Milwaukee area’s population grew only 2%  but the region lost 18% of its farmland.

  3. Regional tax-base sharing. Rusk said this is especially important to Wisconsin  if  state government wants to reduce municipal dependence on state aid.

  4. Regional “fair share” low- and moderate-income housing.

For the text of Rusk's 2001 speech, look here.

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