Borders? We Don't Need no Stinking Borders!

What's the point of a state? Have you ever asked yourself that? There was a time, not all that long ago, when nearly all economic activity was local. You made or grew what you could and you sold at the market to get what you couldn't. Everything you needed was rarely more than a couple days travel away. And, since you were likely traveling by foot, that means just about everything was within what you would likely still recognize as your community. Even after the industrial revolution got under way in earnest, and railroads rewrote the definition of "far away," you would still expect most economic activity would happen nearby. The mansions that still stand on the Westside of Providence were built by the people who owned the mills Down-City. They built in the community, they lived in the community and they spent a good deal of their fortunes in the community. 

With all that activity being so hyper-localized, it makes sense that the politics would be local too. The state provides a way for communities to protect their independence from outside influence. The economies of Boston and Providence have always evolved on more or less parallel lines, but the Boston industrialists were in Boston, and Providence industrialists in Providence. It made no sense that one should have too much influence over the other. 

But that was then. The mansions on the Westside are apartments now. The owners, employees and customers of Rhode Island businesses can, quite literally, come from anywhere. And while I still suspect that most of the economic activity in a given city is generated from within a community, the definition of "local" has been turned on it's ear. Take this recent work by City Lab. It looked at the economic interconnections of major urban areas and found they could easily be grouped into 12 national mega-regions, the largest of which being the Northeastern I-95 corridor. Modern infrastructure has created what is essentially a beaded necklace of urban cores connected by a long thread of suburbs and exurbs, stretching from Portsmouth, NH to Washington DC. 

While I have a hard time thinking of the economic fortunes of Providence as being tied to New Haven, let alone DC, it is difficult to think of our economy without including Pawtucket, Central Falls, East Providence, Attleboro, Fall River and any number of other cities stretching across political boundaries. What seems to be happening, is that infrastructure - especially information infrastructure - has finally begun to erase the social and economic conditions that made the state necessary. We seem to be entering an age where economic interdependence matters more than state lines. Just as once it made no sense for manufacturers in Boston to influence those who lived and worked in Providence, we have to wonder now whether it makes sense for Pawtucket to compete with Attleboro - two cities that share a border in name only - only because of the influence of voters in the Pioneer Valley.

To be clear, this isn't some radical call for the abolition of the state.  States exist for a reason, and I don't think that reason can be obliterated just because someone invented the internet. But it is clear that the idea of the economically independent polity is becoming an increasingly thin fantasy. If the analyses like the one done by City Lab are in any way reflective of reality, then the economic potential of regional cooperation is truly staggering. By one estimate, the economic activity of the I-95 corridor already rivals that of Germany. And this is with cities acting as snobby little school-kids who won't admit they're playing in the same sandbox. If we're truly generating that much money by not cooperating, imagine what we could do if we did.

SOURCE: Richard Florida, City Lab, from the Atlantic, http://www.citylab.com/work/2014/03/dozen-regional-powerhouses-driving-us-economy/8575/