Des Moines Register
10-14-07
Create a powerhouse: U.S. of Midwest
Richard DOAK
Iowa is just too small.
Our little state ought to be forging alliances with our neighbors to become, in
effect, a mega state. A united Upper Midwest could become the nation's next
great growth region.
Step aside, Texas and California. There could be a new big kid on the block, a
confederation of Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska and the Dakotas.
The slogan could be: Flyover Country is about to take off.
Pie in the sky? Maybe, but consider the rationale.
As economic-development guru Richard Florida observed during a talk in Iowa
last month, growth is a regional phenomenon. It doesn't happen according to
state or municipal boundaries. It happens regionally.
That observation rings true. Although economic statistics are kept on a state-bystate basis, in actuality there is probably no such thing as the "Iowa economy."
There is a Midwestern economy of which Iowa is a part.
Iowa's best hope for improving economic growth is as part of something larger.
That something could be an economic juggernaut launched in a united Upper
Midwest.
Here's how to begin:
- Enter into a non-aggression pact, an interstate agreement in which states of the
region would refrain from offering incentives to poach businesses from one
another.
- Merge the state universities of the region into a super system of higher
education, giving students the choice of attending any school in any state at the
resident tuition rate. This would broaden young horizons and open possibilities of
research collaborations that could make Silicon Valley and Research Triangle
look like yesterday's growth engines.
- Build a high-speed rail network linking all the major cities of the Upper Midwest
with Chicago. The region of America that becomes the first to offer an efficient
complement to congested airlines and airports will have a leg up on other
regions.
- Package and sell the Midwest and the Midwestern lifestyle, rather than each
state trying to market its individual charms.
Iowa's experience on that last score has been instructive. For decades, the state
has tried to market itself to the nation as a good place to do business, with
dubious success. Iowa barely registers in the national consciousness, except at
caucus time.
Iowa is too small to sell itself, and, in truth, Iowa doesn't offer much that can't be
found in other Midwestern states. The various states of the region would do
better to cooperatively market the region as a whole.
Look what Texas did. That state is large enough to be a region unto itself, and,
like the Midwest, it once was regarded as a rustic backwater. But Texans,
instead of being defensive about their rural roots, reveled in them. They made
cowboy boots a fashion statement, declared Tex-Mex food a cuisine and even
convinced people that chopping mesquite under the noonday sun is recreation.
The sublime pleasure of sitting on the porch and listening to the corn grow should
be an easier sell than chopping mesquite. A big threshers' dinner surely could be
as much fun as a chili cook-off.
Deep down in the American psyche, there is a yearning for the Midwest - it's the
real America. The states of the Midwest ought to join in enhancing, packaging
and selling Midwestern heritage, Midwestern culture, Midwestern lifestyles,
inviting people to choose a community in what will be the nation's next big growth
region.
The combined states of the Upper Midwest would have a greater population than
Texas, and they would have even more political clout - 14 U.S. senators to
Texas' two.
The region could be greater than the sum of its states. It could be the next Texas.
The rise of Texas came on oil wealth and the self-confidence of Texans.
The rise of the Midwest can come on oil's successor - biofuels and wind energy and the cooperative spirit of Midwesterners.
If the states of the region get together - in the Midwestern spirit of neighbors
pitching in to raise one another's barns - the future will be better than if every
state keeps trying to build alone.
RICHARD DOAK is a retired Register editor and columnist and a lecturer in
journalism at Iowa State University.