At a legislative conference in Cambridge, Ohio, Bruce Katz stressed the importance of cities and metro areas to the state's overall prosperity. Acknowledging the decline of Ohio's older industrial cities, Katz noted the area's many assets and argued for a focus on innovation, human capital, infrastructure, and quality communities as means to revitalize the region. 

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The 2008 Ohio Summit – Restoring Our Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing Ohio’s Core Communities convened more than 1000 government, corporate, civic, neighborhood and academic leaders from around the state, including Governor Ted Strickland, Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher, Senate President Bill Harris and Speaker of the House Jon Husted confirmed as speakers. The Summit was co-convened by the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings and GreaterOhio.

The purpose of The Summit was to elicit reaction to a draft set of proposals for state policy reforms that reflect a critique of past policies, aimed at revitalizing communities throughout Ohio. Each of the recommendations was carefully tailored to the unique assets and challenges of Ohio’s 32 core communities whose revitalization is the springboard to a more prosperous and competitive state as a whole. Comments derived from this gathering will help to shape the final report to be released in early 2009.

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Event Presentations:

• Bruce Katz Vice President and Director, Metropolitan Policy Program
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  Download written remarks
• Scott Bernstein President, Center for Neighborhood Technology 
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• Rob Greenbaum Professor, John Glenn School of Public Affairs, Ohio State University 
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• Mark Partridge Swank Chair in Rural-Urban Policy, The Ohio State University 
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• Jane Dockery Associate Director, Center for Urban and Public Affairs, Wright State University 
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• Alan Mallach Nonresident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution 
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Event Resources:

• Welcome Letter 
• Summit Agenda 
• Sponsor List 
• Biographies of the Speakers 
• Executive Summary- Restoring Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing Ohio’s Core Communities 
• A Restoring Prosperity Case Study: Akron, Ohio 
• Working Draft: Restoring Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing Ohio’s Core Communities 
• Working Draft: Our Joint Future: Rural-Urban Interdependence in 21st Century Ohio 
• Restoring Prosperity to Ohio: Fact Sheet 
• Ohio Summit in the News

Lavea Brachman and The Honorable Michael Coleman		The audience at Restoring Prosperity
The Honorable Ted Strickland		Douglas Kridler, The Honorable Jon Husted, Nancy Zimpher, Al Ratner, The Honorable David Burger

Video

• The Honorable Michael Coleman
• Lavea Brachman
• Bruce Katz
• The Honorable Ted Strickland

      

Bruce Katz offers a number of key recommendations to foster prosperity in the Buckeye state.

       

       

Ohio has the assets that matter in growing a prosperous economy, Bruce Katz explains, and that the state's ability to compete globally relies on its 32 core communities.

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Video

• Recommendations to Foster Prosperity in Ohio

       

Part of the larger Northeast Ohio regional economy, the Akron metropolitan area is composed of two counties (Summit and Portage) with a population of just over 700,000, and is surrounded by three other metropolitan areas. Akron is located approximately 40 miles south of Cleveland, 50 miles west of Youngstown, and 23 miles north of Canton. The Cleveland metro area is a five-county region with a population of 2.1 million. The Youngstown metro area includes three counties, extending into Pennsylvania, and has a population of 587,000. Canton is part of a two-county metropolitan area with a population of 410,000.

The adjacency of the Akron and Cleveland Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) is an important factor in the economic performance of the Akron region. The interdependence of economies of the two MSAs is evidenced by the strong economic growth of the northern part of Summit County adjacent to the core county of the Cleveland metropolitan area. This part of Summit County beyond the city of Akron provides available land, access to the labor pools of the two metropolitan areas, and proximity to the region’s extensive transportation network.

Although affected by economic activity in the larger region, the fate and future of Akron and its wider region are not solely determined by events in these adjacent areas. While sharing broad economic trends with its neighbors, the Akron metro area has been impacted by a different set of events and has shown different patterns of growth from other areas in Northeast Ohio.

This study provides an in-depth look at Akron’s economy over the past century. It begins by tracing the industrial history of the Akron region, describing the growth of the rubber industry from the late 1800s through much of following century, to its precipitous decline beginning in the 1970s. It then discusses how the “bottoming out” of this dominant industry gave rise to the industrial restructuring of the area. The paper explores the nature of this restructuring, and the steps and activities the city’s business, civic, and government leaders have undertaken to help spur its recovery and redevelopment. In doing so, it provides a series of lessons to other older industrial regions working to find their own economic niche in a changing global economy. 

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Introduction

Ohio has already taken important steps to address the state’s ongoing foreclosure crisis, yet the crisis continues, causing distress for thousands of families and individuals, and destabilizing cities, towns and neighborhoods across the state. Therefore, the state, its local governments and private stakeholders need to do still more to deal more effectively with the crisis and its impacts on the state’s housing stock, cities and neighborhoods.

What is often termed the “foreclosure crisis” is actually a multi-dimensional crisis, in which the collapse of the housing bubble, the devastation caused by the lax and often irresponsible credit practices that accompanied and perpetuated that bubble, the resulting freeze on commercial and consumer credit, and the worldwide recession are interwoven, and can only with great difficulty be untangled. In Ohio, those forces are further exacerbated by profound changes to the state’s historical economic underpinnings. Ohio cannot solve the crisis by itself, but it can significantly mitigate its impact on people, neighborhoods, and towns and cities. These mitigating efforts will also help preserve the value of homes and neighborhoods in the state, and place Ohio in a stronger position to benefit from the future economic recovery.

The paper begins with a short summary of current conditions and the actions the state has already taken to address the wave of foreclosures, followed by a discussion of areas for future action. This discussion will address mitigating both the individual and community impacts of foreclosure, but will give particular emphasis to the critical issue of softening the blow of foreclosure on communities, which up to now has been less of a focus for state action.

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Before the City Club in Cleveland, Bruce Katz emphasized the importance of Ohio's older industrial cities for the state's overall prosperity and outlined, despite seemingly grim statistics, why now is the time for a rebirth of those places and how it can be achieved.

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• Download Remarks by Lt. Gov. Fisher

       

At a legislative conference in Cambridge, Ohio, Bruce Katz stressed the importance of cities and metro areas to the state's overall prosperity. Acknowledging the decline of Ohio's older industrial cities, Katz noted the area's many assets and argued for a focus on innovation, human capital, infrastructure, and quality communities as means to revitalize the region. 

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Editor's Note: At a “Restoring Prosperity” gathering at Cleveland State University, Bruce Katz called upon Ohio’s leaders to take bold measures to stabilize the state’s economy by focusing on core communities—home to the assets that are key to recovery.

I want to thank Ned Hill of Cleveland State, Lavea Brachman of Greater Ohio, and Randell McShepard of Policy Bridge for hosting this important forum today.

Last Thursday I attended a keynote speech by Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations.

The Secretary General provided a sober analysis of the stark challenges facing the global community:

• The worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression;
• the acquisition and testing of nuclear weapons by rogue states like North Korea and Iran;
• the existential threat of climate change; and
• the continued instability in the Middle East and other regions of the world.

The Secretary General ended his talk with a clarion call for new international frameworks and structures to govern our troubled world.

“This is not a time for tinkering,” he said, “but a time for transformation.”

Ban Ki Moon’s call for transformative thinking and action frames my talk today.

A housing crisis—fueled by reckless lending and regulatory abdication—has evolved into a full blown economic collapse, here and abroad.

In the last year, the US unemployment rate rose almost 4 percentage points, and now stands at 9.4 percent. In March, 13.2 million people were unemployed—the highest number since records started being kept in 1948.

On a whole series of indicators, in fact, we are at the worst levels since the government started tallying this information 40, 50, 60 years ago:

• continued unemployment claims
• consumer confidence index
• housing starts
• new home sales
• new home completions

Ohio doesn’t look any better, and on many indicators it is faring worse than the nation as a whole. The state’s unemployment rate is currently over 10 percent. Ohio is one of the four states whose metros were hit hardest in terms of employment figures over the last year (with Michigan, California, and Florida).

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It can be hard to find good news lately in Ohio. Foreclosure filings are at record levels -- again. Income tax receipts plummeted by 35.6 percent from April 2008 to April 2009, and the downward trend continues in 2010. Unemployment remains high: The Cleveland region's jobless rate was 8.9 percent in December.

But the current devastation is only half the story. Ohio is in a paradoxical moment: The present is painful, but the future could be promising. And in another paradox, its manufacturing heritage is part of the reason why.

The pre-recession economy was driven by consumption, energy profligacy and financial bubbles. The next American economy must be very different: export oriented, low carbon and innovation fueled.

According to the World Bank, exports make up only 11 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States, compared to 40 percent in Europe, 40 percent in China, 36 percent in Canada, 22 percent in India and 16 percent in Japan. Only 4 percent of U.S. companies export. Less than 0.5 percent of U.S. companies operate in more than one country.

Ohio can lead the United States back into the export game, because the state still manufactures what the rest of the world wants, including medical instruments, electrical machinery and aircraft parts.

Brazil and China, two rapidly growing economies, are Ohio's third- and fourth-largest trading partners. The seven largest Ohio metros exported about $3.6 billion's worth of goods and services to Brazil, India and China in 2007 alone.

Cleveland is in the country's top quarter of large metros in terms of export intensity (the percentage of metropolitan-region output that is exported overseas). Every patient who comes from abroad to visit the Cleveland Clinic bolsters the region's service exports economy.

Low carbon is the second hallmark of the next U.S. economy, and it could spark a production revolution in Ohio and other manufacturing states.

The transition to a low-carbon economy is fundamentally about markets and products. We will need new energy supplies -- like wind and biomass -- and new machines -- like turbines and solar panels.

Also, we will need new kinds of batteries, new kinds of cars and energy-efficient appliances, smart meters and local food. All of these products could be designed, developed, built and grown in Ohio.

The state ranks seventh in the nation for total green-technology patents for 1998–2007, with strengths in batteries, hybrid systems and fuel cells.

According to a recent report by the Pew Center on the States, Ohio's number of clean-energy jobs grew by more than 7 percent between 1998 and 2007, even as the overall number of jobs in the state fell 2 percent.

Creating the products and services demanded across the globe, and those that fit with a low-carbon world, will take quantum leaps in innovation.

Already, the state is gaining some notice, attracting $46 million in venture capital investments in clean technology in 2008, more than triple the 2007 amount.

The state is in the top 10 nationally in science and engineering doctorates awarded, in academic research and development spending, and in small-business-innovation research awards, according to recent National Science Foundation data.

Cleveland's patent rate, another measure of innovative power, is above the national average.

We used to think that we could divorce innovation entirely from production, keeping the former here as we sent most of the latter abroad. But important innovations also emerge from the factory floor. Innovating more means producing more, and that production can take place in Ohio.

It is true that Ohio's job losses in manufacturing have been staggering, especially in the northeast corner of the state. But manufacturing doesn't have to be a millstone -- it can be a stepping stone toward the next economy.

It is this mindset that should drive Ohioans' policy decisions over the next year. It is not easy to raise spending on innovation, or vote for an additional $700 million for the Third Frontier, while pressing school districts and local governments to find more savings. But those hard choices will position Ohio for a stronger future.

The "Restoring Prosperity" report that the Brookings Institution and the Greater Ohio Policy Center released last week recommends 39 policies -- from rebuilding physical assets to reorganizing work-force supports to collaborating at the regional scale -- that can help Ohio strengthen its footing in an export-oriented, low-carbon and innovation-fueled world. Groups like the Fund for our Economic Future are already working to advance many of these ideas.

Yet just as important as the policies is the underlying message: Even as this economy falters, Ohio could benefit from the next one that's emerging. Your strengths are just as real and relevant as the current crisis.

       

For over 100 years, the driving force of Ohio’s economy has been the state’s so-called Big Eight cities—Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron, Dayton, Canton, and Youngstown. Today, though, the driving reality of these cities is sustained, long-term population loss. The central issue confronting these cities—and the state and surrounding metropolitan area—is not whether these cities will have different physical footprints and more green space than they do now, but how it will happen.

The state must adopt a different way of thinking and a different vision of its cities’ future—and so must the myriad local, civic, philanthropic, and business leaders who will also play a role in reshaping Ohio’s cities. The following seven basic premises should inform any vision for a smaller, stronger future and subsequent strategies for change in these places:

• These cities contain significant assets for future rebuilding
  
• These cities will not regain their peak population
  
• These cities have a surplus of housing
  
• These cities have far more vacant land than can be absorbed by redevelopment
  
• Impoverishment threatens the viability of these cities more than population loss as such
  
• Local resources are severely limited
  
• The fate of cities and their metropolitan areas are inextricably inter-connected
  

These premises have significant implications for the strategies that state and local governments should pursue to address the issues of shrinking cities.

Full Paper on Ohio's Cities » (PDF)
Paper on Shrinking Cities Across the United States »

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• Full Paper

       

This is the third in a series of reports on the demographic and political dynamics under way in key “battleground” states, deemed to be crucial in deciding the 2008 election. As part of the Metropolitan Policy Program’s Blueprint for American Prosperity, this series will provide an electoral component to the initiative’s analysis of and prescriptions for bolstering the health and vitality of America’s metropolitan areas, the engines of the U.S. economy. This report focuses on three major battleground states in the Midwest—Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri—and finds that:

Ohio, Michigan and Missouri all feature eligible voter populations dominated by white working class voters. However, this profile is changing, albeit more slowly than in faster-growing states like Colorado or Arizona, as the white working class declines and white college graduates and minorities, especially Hispanics, increase. The largest effects are in these states’ major metropolitan areas— Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati in Ohio: Detroit in Michigan; and St. Louis and Kansas City in Missouri— especially in their suburbs.

In Ohio, these trends could have their strongest impact in the fast-growing and Democratic-trending Columbus metro, where Democrats will seek to tip the entire metro in their favor by expanding their margin in Franklin County and reducing their deficit in the suburbs. The trends could also have big impacts in the Cleveland metro (especially its suburbs), in the Cincinnati metro (especially Hamilton County) and in the mediumsized metros of the Northeast (Akron, Canton, and Youngstown). Overall, the GOP will be looking to maintain their support among the declining white working class, especially among whites with some college, who have been trending Democratic. Also critical to their prospects is whether the growing white college-educated group will continue its movement toward the Democrats.

In Michigan, these trends will likely determine whether the fast-growing and populous Detroit suburbs continue shifting toward the Democrats, a development which would tip the Detroit metro (44 percent of the statewide vote) even farther in the direction of the Democrats. The trends will also have a big impact on whether the GOP can continue their hold on the conservative and growing Southwest region of the state that includes the Grand Rapids metro. The GOP will seek to increase its support among white college graduates, who gave the GOP relatively strong support in 2004, but have been trending toward the Democrats long term.

In Missouri, these trends will have their strongest impact on the two big metros of Democratic-trending St. Louis (38 percent of the vote)—especially its suburbs— and GOP-trending Kansas City (20 percent of the statewide vote). The Democrats need a large increase in their margins out of these two metros to have a chance of taking the state, while the GOP simply needs to hold the line. The trends will also have a significant impact on the conservative and growing Southwest region, the bulwark of GOP support in the state, where the Republicans will look to generate even higher support levels. The GOP will try to maintain its support from the strongly pro-GOP white college graduate group, which has been increasing its share of voters as it has trended Republican.

These large, modestly growing states in the heartland of the United States will play a pivotal roll in November’s election. Though experiencing smaller demographic shifts than many other states, they are each changing in ways that underscore the contested status of their combined 48 Electoral College votes in this year’s presidential contest.



Table Of Contents:
Executive Summary » 
Introduction and Data Sources and Definitions » 
Ohio » 
Michigan » 
Missouri » 
Endnotes »

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For over 100 years, the driving force of Ohio’s economy has been the state’s so-called Big Eight cities—Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron, Dayton, Canton, and Youngstown. Today, though, the driving reality of these cities is sustained, long-term population loss. The central issue confronting these cities—and the state and surrounding metropolitan area—is not whether these cities will have different physical footprints and more green space than they do now, but how it will happen.

The state must adopt a different way of thinking and a different vision of its cities’ future—and so must the myriad local, civic, philanthropic, and business leaders who will also play a role in reshaping Ohio’s cities. The following seven basic premises should inform any vision for a smaller, stronger future and subsequent strategies for change in these places:

• These cities contain significant assets for future rebuilding
  
• These cities will not regain their peak population
  
• These cities have a surplus of housing
  
• These cities have far more vacant land than can be absorbed by redevelopment
  
• Impoverishment threatens the viability of these cities more than population loss as such
  
• Local resources are severely limited
  
• The fate of cities and their metropolitan areas are inextricably inter-connected
  

These premises have significant implications for the strategies that state and local governments should pursue to address the issues of shrinking cities.

Full Paper on Ohio's Cities » (PDF)
Paper on Shrinking Cities Across the United States »

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• Full Paper

       

Part of the larger Northeast Ohio regional economy, the Akron metropolitan area is composed of two counties (Summit and Portage) with a population of just over 700,000, and is surrounded by three other metropolitan areas. Akron is located approximately 40 miles south of Cleveland, 50 miles west of Youngstown, and 23 miles north of Canton. The Cleveland metro area is a five-county region with a population of 2.1 million. The Youngstown metro area includes three counties, extending into Pennsylvania, and has a population of 587,000. Canton is part of a two-county metropolitan area with a population of 410,000.

The adjacency of the Akron and Cleveland Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) is an important factor in the economic performance of the Akron region. The interdependence of economies of the two MSAs is evidenced by the strong economic growth of the northern part of Summit County adjacent to the core county of the Cleveland metropolitan area. This part of Summit County beyond the city of Akron provides available land, access to the labor pools of the two metropolitan areas, and proximity to the region’s extensive transportation network.

Although affected by economic activity in the larger region, the fate and future of Akron and its wider region are not solely determined by events in these adjacent areas. While sharing broad economic trends with its neighbors, the Akron metro area has been impacted by a different set of events and has shown different patterns of growth from other areas in Northeast Ohio.

This study provides an in-depth look at Akron’s economy over the past century. It begins by tracing the industrial history of the Akron region, describing the growth of the rubber industry from the late 1800s through much of following century, to its precipitous decline beginning in the 1970s. It then discusses how the “bottoming out” of this dominant industry gave rise to the industrial restructuring of the area. The paper explores the nature of this restructuring, and the steps and activities the city’s business, civic, and government leaders have undertaken to help spur its recovery and redevelopment. In doing so, it provides a series of lessons to other older industrial regions working to find their own economic niche in a changing global economy. 

Download Case Study » (PDF)

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Introduction

Ohio has already taken important steps to address the state’s ongoing foreclosure crisis, yet the crisis continues, causing distress for thousands of families and individuals, and destabilizing cities, towns and neighborhoods across the state. Therefore, the state, its local governments and private stakeholders need to do still more to deal more effectively with the crisis and its impacts on the state’s housing stock, cities and neighborhoods.

What is often termed the “foreclosure crisis” is actually a multi-dimensional crisis, in which the collapse of the housing bubble, the devastation caused by the lax and often irresponsible credit practices that accompanied and perpetuated that bubble, the resulting freeze on commercial and consumer credit, and the worldwide recession are interwoven, and can only with great difficulty be untangled. In Ohio, those forces are further exacerbated by profound changes to the state’s historical economic underpinnings. Ohio cannot solve the crisis by itself, but it can significantly mitigate its impact on people, neighborhoods, and towns and cities. These mitigating efforts will also help preserve the value of homes and neighborhoods in the state, and place Ohio in a stronger position to benefit from the future economic recovery.

The paper begins with a short summary of current conditions and the actions the state has already taken to address the wave of foreclosures, followed by a discussion of areas for future action. This discussion will address mitigating both the individual and community impacts of foreclosure, but will give particular emphasis to the critical issue of softening the blow of foreclosure on communities, which up to now has been less of a focus for state action.

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Ohio, like most other states in the country and particularly its neighbors in the Great Lakes region, is still reeling from the “Great Recession.” This economic crisis, the worst in a half century, has devastated economies across the globe.

While economists have declared that the recession has abated, it will be a long time before the businesses, households, and government treasuries across the country, and specifically in the state of Ohio, shake off the effects. And when the recession’s grip finally breaks, what will Ohio’s economy and landscape look like?

The choices that Ohio’s people and its leaders make—starting now and continuing over the next few years—will determine that answer. Ohioans can decide whether to shy away from manufacturing after the loss of so many jobs, or to transform the state’s old manufacturing strengths, derived from its role in the auto supply chain, into new products, markets, and opportunities. They can decide to opt out of the national shift to a lower-carbon economy, or to be at the forefront of developing clean coal and renewable energy industries and jobs.

They can choose a workforce system that is aligned to the true metropolitan scale of the economy and oriented to the needs of workers and employers. They can choose transformative transportation networks over more roads; smaller, greener, stronger cities; collaboration and regional cooperation to save money, reduce duplication, and bolster regional competitiveness. And instead of trying to go it alone in the 21st century global marketplace, they can maximize the federal resources on offer to support Ohio’s economic transformation and choose to compete effectively for new federal investments.

This report, Restoring Prosperity: Transforming Ohio’s Communities for the Next Economy, lays out some of the specific policy options that will help Ohioans restore the prosperity that the state enjoyed for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, but that it has been struggling to regain for at least a decade, if not longer.

Full Report »

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• Full Report
• Executive Summary
• Bruce Katz's Speech in Ohio

       

For over 100 years, the driving force of Ohio’s economy has been the state’s so-called Big Eight cities—Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron, Dayton, Canton, and Youngstown. Today, though, the driving reality of these cities is sustained, long-term population loss. The central issue confronting these cities—and the state and surrounding metropolitan area—is not whether these cities will have different physical footprints and more green space than they do now, but how it will happen.

The state must adopt a different way of thinking and a different vision of its cities’ future—and so must the myriad local, civic, philanthropic, and business leaders who will also play a role in reshaping Ohio’s cities. The following seven basic premises should inform any vision for a smaller, stronger future and subsequent strategies for change in these places:

• These cities contain significant assets for future rebuilding
  
• These cities will not regain their peak population
  
• These cities have a surplus of housing
  
• These cities have far more vacant land than can be absorbed by redevelopment
  
• Impoverishment threatens the viability of these cities more than population loss as such
  
• Local resources are severely limited
  
• The fate of cities and their metropolitan areas are inextricably inter-connected
  

These premises have significant implications for the strategies that state and local governments should pursue to address the issues of shrinking cities.

Full Paper on Ohio's Cities » (PDF)
Paper on Shrinking Cities Across the United States »

Downloads

• Full Paper

       

       

       

       

       

Analysis of dozens of publicly created redistricting plans shows that map-making technology can improve political representation and detect a gerrymander.  In 2012, President Obama won the vote in Ohio by three percentage points, while Republicans held a 13-to-5 majority in Ohio’s delegation to the U.S. House. After redistricting in 2013, Republicans held 12 of Ohio’s House seats while Democrats held four. As is typical in these races, few were competitive; the average margin of victory was 32 points. Is this simply a result of demography, the need to create a majority-minority district, and the constraints traditional redistricting principles impose on election lines—or did the legislature intend to create a gerrymander?

Crowd-Sourced Redistricting Maps

In the Ohio elections, we have a new source of information that opens a window into the legislature’s choice: Large numbers of publicly created redistricting plans.

During the last round of redistricting, across the country thousands of people in over a dozen states created hundreds of legal redistricting plans. Advances in information technology and the engagement of grassroots reform groups made these changes possible. To promote these efforts we created the DistrictBuilder open redistricting platform and many of these groups used this tool to create their plans.

Over the last several years, we have used the trove of information produced by public redistricting to gain insight into the politics of representation. In previous work that analyzed public redistricting in Virginia^[1], and in Florida^[2], we discovered that members of the public are capable of creating legal redistricting plans that outperform those maps created by legislatures in a number of ways.

Public redistricting in Ohio shows something new—the likely motives of the legislature. This can be seen through using information visualization methods to show the ways in which redistricting goals can be balanced (or traded-off) in Ohio , revealing the particular trade-offs made by the legislature.

The figure below, from our new research paper^[3], shows 21 plots—each of which compares legislative and publicly-created plans using a pair of scores—altogether covering seven different traditional and representational criteria. A tiny ‘A’ shows the adopted plan. The top-right corner of each mini-plot shows the best theoretically possible score. When examined by itself, the legislative plan meets a few criteria: it minimizes population deviation, creates an expected majority-minority seat, and creates a substantial majority of districts that would theoretically be competitive in an open-seat race in which the statewide vote was evenly split.

Figure 1: Pairwise Congressional Score Comparisons (Scatterplots) - Standardized Scores

In previous rounds of redistricting, empirical analysis would stop here—unless experts were called in to draw alternative plans in litigation. However, the large number of public plans now available allows us to see other options, plans the legislature could readily have created had it desired to do so. Comparison of the adopted plans and public plans reveal the weakness of the legislature’s choice. Members of the public were able to find plans that soundly beat the legislative plan on almost every pair of criteria, including competitive districts.

So why was the adopted plan chosen? Information visualization can help here, as well, but we need to add another criterion—partisan advantage:

Pareto Frontier: Standard Criteria vs. Democratic Surplus

When we visualize the number of expected Democratic seats that was likely to result from each plan, and compare this to the other score, we can see that the adopted plan is the best at something— producing Republican seats.

Was Ohio gerrymandered? Applying our proposed gerrymandering detection method, the adopted plans stands in high contrast to the public sample of plans, even if the overall competition scoring formula is slightly biased towards the Democrats, as strongly biased towards the Republicans on any measure of partisan fairness. Moreover analyzing the tradeoffs among redistricting criteria illuminate empirically demonstrates what is often suspected, but is typically impossible to demonstrate—that had the legislature desired to improve any good-government criterion—it could have done so, simply by sacrificing some partisan advantage. In light of this new body of evidence, the political intent of the legislature is clearly displayed.

However, when politics and technology mix, beware of Kranzberg’s first law: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”^[4] Indeed there is an unexpected and hopeful lesson on reform revealed by the public participation that was enabled by new technology. The public plans show that, in Ohio, it is possible to improve the expected competitiveness, and to improve compliance with traditional districting principles such as county integrity, without threatening majority-minority districts simply by reducing partisan advantage—this is a tradeoff we should gladly accept.

       

       

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