editorials

If Metropolitan Council Chairman Peter Bell's final State of the Region speech last week contained a subliminal message, it was probably this: Seven years of conservative leadership has not destroyed the Twin Cities' four-decade experiment in metro governance. The sky has not fallen. The clock has not been turned back. Even the most exalted liberal element of metro planning -- rail transit -- has pushed ahead to the point that the Twin Cities is no longer decades behind its competitors.

Indeed Bell, who expects to leave his post when Gov. Tim Pawlenty steps aside next year, has done a stellar job on many fronts. Under his guidance, Republican catcalls of "train to nowhere" have given way to an acceptance of transit as a worthy partner and an expectation (thanks to a veto override) of more train lines in the years ahead.

But nowhere in Bell's thoughtful recounting of accomplishments and challenges was there a mention of the Met Council's fundamental flaw, one that predates the Pawlenty years: The council has been powerless to stop the steady and destructive decentralization of the metro region. Despite its national reputation for planning and its mission of "orderly and economical development," the council continues to encourage growth at the suburban edge at the expense of redirecting development and vitality back toward the center.

That kind of planning is neither orderly nor economical. And it moves the Twin Cities metro "in the wrong direction," according to Bruce Katz, the metropolitan policy director at the Brookings Institution. Brookings follows closely the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the nation's largest metro areas. It classifies the Twin Cities as "rapidly decentralizing" at a time when conditions demand just the opposite.

Katz and other analysts worry, and rightly so, that this metro area is out of step with profound global changes that demand more efficient development patterns, smaller carbon footprints and a wedding of transportation and land-use policies. The future, they believe, demands more Pilates (a strengthening of core muscles) and less expansion of the metro waistline.

Yet the Met Council continues to encourage 70 percent of new growth on fresh ground at the suburban edge and only 30 percent in developed areas with infrastructure already in place. Those numbers should be reversed. Our growth pattern is more akin to the failed cities of the Rust Belt than the attractive places that the Twin Cities likes to consider its peers. The central districts of Denver, Seattle and Portland, for example, have been attracting a metrowide share of redevelopment well above the share of Minneapolis and St. Paul. (See chart).

The dispersal of jobs away from downtowns is especially worrisome because it forces auto dependence and longer commutes. When jobs were still expanding and transit emerging (2002-2008), the western suburbs added 24 times more office space than transit-friendly downtown Minneapolis. The Hiawatha line may have attracted housing (7,700 units by Bell's count), but not jobs. The acres of empty land abutting the rail line in downtown Minneapolis are symbolic of the council's failure to generate efficient land use.

Bell resists any plea that the council -- like some transit agencies elsewhere -- get into the land development business, or even that it strengthen incentives to locate jobs near transit. It's not that he disputes Brookings' "decentralizing" assessment. He doesn't. But he says that political reality prevents the council from emphasizing infill. The expanding suburbs at the metro edge want to continue expanding, and they are the tail that wags the dog. Metro governance is a delicate thing, as Bell pointed out on Monday. It teeters between what's best for the metro as a whole and the perceived self-interest of individual suburbs -- and self-interest has been on a roll. Decentralization, unfortunately, has become who we are.

Our best hope, perhaps, is that the market is shifting toward a more benign growth on the metro's outer limits. Large households, large lots and lengthy commutes are on the decline; compact communities, transit ridership and walkable neighborhoods are on the rise, even on the suburban edge. A tight state budget will limit the expansive road projects that encourage sprawl. And development, when it resumes, may be rated -- at least nominally -- on carbon impact.

One way or another, the Twin Cities metro needs to strengthen its core if it wants to regain its competitive edge. It needs more Pilates and less middle-age spread.