Traffic congestion that keeps getting worse, vast disparities in the performance of schoolchildren and a shortage of venture capital for new technology start-ups threaten the Chicago area’s vitality and economic competitiveness, leaders of one of the region’s major civic organizations warned Monday.
“We’ve had a great decade from an economic point of view, but we’ve identified three warning signals we have to pay attention to if we’re to be globally competitive in the year 2020,” said George A. Ranney Jr., president of Chicago Metropolis 2020 and a partner in the law firm of Mayer, Brown and Platt.
Metropolis 2020, founded by the Commercial Club of Chicago, released “Regional Realities: Measuring Progress Toward Shared Regional Goals,” at a luncheon in the Loop.
Frank H. Beal, executive director of Metropolis 2020, called the 62-page document an “early warning system.” A follow-up to the organization’s 1998 report, “Chicago Metropolis 2020: Preparing Metropolitan Chicago for the 21st Century,” the study released Monday is a progress report, a report card for the area.
Like its predecessor, it aims to call attention to key issues of the day, such as the quality of education, traffic jams, affordable housing, safe neighborhoods, open-space preservation and economic viability.
Andrew J. McKenna, chairman of Metropolis 2020 and of Schwarz Paper Co., acknowledged that the document covers a lot of territory; it spells out 12 “key goals” and 40 “progress measures.” But it’s a worthwhile exercise, he said, “if we can have just one or two good achievements in the short term.”
A program could be developed to reach more families of preschool-age children, so the youngsters can be better prepared to enter school, McKenna said.
Now, more than 10 percent of the region’s preschoolers–roughly 73,000 children–have parents who do not read to them, according to a survey of area residents conducted for the Metropolis study.
In addition, McKenna said, more affordable housing could be developed near suburban job centers to reduce the number of people driving to work.
Citing data of the Texas Transportation Institute, the Metropolis study said the time commuters spent stuck in traffic rose 42 percent between 1990 and 1997, to an annual total of 44 hours from 31 hours.
“We currently are the fourth most-congested region in the country,” Beal said. “If this continues, investors and businesses will happily bypass Chicago as a place to grow, as they are now bypassing Atlanta.”
Most of the data released Monday were positive. The region’s unemployment rate fell to 4.1 percent in 1999 from a high of 7.4 percent in 1992, and the area’s labor force grew by 7.7 percent in the 1990s.
The Metropolis 2020 study estimated that the six-county region now has 7.85 million people and 4.1 million jobs. Two-thirds of the homes sold here in 1999 were affordable to buyers earning the area’s median income, up from 59 percent in 1995.
Violent crime here dropped 25 percent during the 1990s, and property crime fell 20 percent. Infant mortality rates fell 24 percent, and the death rate from heart disease fell 22 percent, between 1990 and 1997.
But a continuing shortage of venture capital could be an Achilles’ heel for the economy.
Venture capital investment here tripled in just one year’s time, to $1.19 billion from 1998 to 1999. Still, the region’s share of nationwide start-up funding fell to around 2 percent for each of the past six years from 4.8 percent in 1990, “lower than one would expect, given the size of our economy,” Beal said.
And the area’s share of “gazelles”–fast-growing, publicly traded, entrepreneurial companies–has stagnated for the past decade at less than 3 percent of the national total.
“Regional Realities” called on civic, corporate and government leaders to deal with the identified problems before they grow so big that they hinder the area’s ability to compete for jobs and businesses on a global basis.
“Our hope,” Ranney said, “is this becomes the baseline for understanding and measuring progress for the next few decades.”
The full text of “Regional Realities” is available by calling Chicago Metropolis 2020 at 312-332-2020 or online at www.chicagometropolis2020.org.
