Bruce Adams
“Imagine A Greater Washington”
Smithsonian
October 2, 1996

President Kennedy said it best: “More than any other city, more than any other region, the nation’s capital should represent the finest in a living environment which America can plan and build.”

By that standard, we aren’t doing very well. Instead, we have a center city deteriorating at a frightening pace and a region drifting to mediocrity. We are viewed as an economic, social, and moral basket case throughout our country and around the world. Leno and Letterman know the mere mention of Washington provokes laughter.

My mentor John Gardner says the average city in America has a leadership capacity capable of running a small country. It is no exaggeration to say that our region has the leadership capacity to run the world. No other region has a higher per capita income. Nowhere is there such a concentration of people with advanced academic degrees. No other region has so many people so experienced in private and public sector problem-solving.

In fact, despite our negative image, we are a region of talented people doing extraordinary things -- from scientists inventing the treatments that will transform medicine in the next century to volunteers dedicating their lives to helping the neediest of our fellow citizens.

Why is it that we can’t seem to fix our potholes, prepare all of our kids for the future, and guarantee an adequate supply of clean water?

Why? Because of our lack of vision and our failure of political will. Despite all our talent and resources, we are failing miserably.

Neal Peirce is the nation’s most thoughtful observer of how America works. In the global marketplace, Peirce says, regions are what matter. Our economies work at a regional scale. Despite the fact that our governments are established at the local, state, and national levels, we live our lives at the neighborhood, regional, and global levels. The real city is the region. Other regions in this country and around the world get it. They are organizing and acting regionally. They know that collaboration and cooperation are the keys to success in the global marketplace. Washington is way behind the curve.

Very simply, we need a new way of solving critical regional problems or we face a future of sprawling growth, fewer trees and less green space, continuing economic stagnation, more traffic congestion, and an endangered Chesapeake Bay. Virtually all the problems that affect our quality of life require solutions beyond the local jurisdictions where we live and work.

The people who roll up their sleeves each day to make this world and region a better place mostly do so in isolation. No one is making the connections that could restore our faith in our capacity for self-government. No one is telling the story of what Washington could be, should be, in the twenty-first century.

The needed prescriptions aren’t exactly rocket science. They reflect simple, straightforward common sense. They are the smart things to do. And they are the right things to do. More jobs for inner-city youth mean less crime in the region. Better educated students mean a future-ready workforce. Transit friendly development means easier commutes and a healthier environment.

Why is the Washington region so oblivious to the obvious? At a time of increasing economic integration throughout the world, the Washington region is falling victim to more and more political fragmentation. In the Washington region, politics is played as a zero-sum game. If the District wins, the suburbs lose. If Fairfax wins, Montgomery loses. If the developers win, the environmentalists lose. This tired old interest group model of parochial politics is being rejected in successful regions across the country. Why do we continue to play it here?

Several years ago, former President Carter asked a group assembled by the Federal City Council if anyone thought we could solve our problems by simply working harder at what we are doing. Not a single hand was raised.

Here at the end of the twentieth century, despite our enormous talents and great resources, the Washington region is floundering. While other great regions of the world organize themselves for the twenty-first century, Washington is paralyzed by doubt and apathy. The drumbeat of negativism from our daily paper and on the nightly television news appears to have sapped our energy and destroyed our hope. While other great regions are collaborating and cooperating. Washington is stuck in the old politics of confrontation and gridlock. While other great regions of the world are defining fresh, positive visions for the next century, Washington has no vision.

In fact, the Washington region is a special place precisely because of the visionary efforts of our forefathers. Two hundred years ago, L’Enfant laid out the basic plan for our nation’s capital. At the turn of the century, Senator McMillan’s Park Commission proposed the vision of a Monumental Washington. In the late 1950s, a joint congressional committee chaired by Senator Bible set in motion the forces that led to the Year 2000 Plan and our Metrorail system. But who today is looking ahead at where our region will be in ten or twenty or twenty-five years?

In the opening scene of Winnie-the-Pooh, Christopher Robin drags Winnie down the stairs “bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head....It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.”

Well, there is a better way. With the support of the Arcana Foundation, The Foundation for the National Capital Region, Prince Charitable Trusts, and The Summit Fund, I have had the opportunity to stop bumping for a while and think about what that better way might look like.

So come with me for a few minutes and imagine a different future. Suspend your inside-the-Washington Beltway cynicism for the moment. Imagine that we applied our full talents to making the Washington region the finest place in the world to live, work, and raise our children. I call my dream “A Greater Washington”. By that I mean both a Washington that is better, stronger, and more vibrant than the Washington of today as well as a Washington that is larger than the city, a Washington that is metropolitan in its vision.

Imagine if one year from today, one-hundred of the most prominent political, business, and community leaders representing the full diversity of our region joined together to sign a Declaration of Interdependence committing themselves to work together to build a stronger region. This Declaration must go beyond the platitudes and generalities of working together to specific commitments to solve the region’s most difficult challenges in transportation, environment, crime, and health and human resources.

Imagine creating a broad-based constituency for the region with thousands of citizens joining together. It would be an alliance of business and community activists to work for a stronger region. I can see hundreds of alumni of the eight leadership development programs in the region -- from Leadership Fairfax to Leadership Maryland -- pledging to use their skills to build this constituency for the region.

Imagine this group -- call it “A Greater Washington” -- organizing conversations throughout the region that cut across the barriers of race and class and of geography and ideology that now divide and diminish us. I can see involving tens of thousands of the region’s citizens in a dialogue about our future on the Internet, at the Smithsonian, and in hundreds of living rooms, libraries, places of worship, community centers, and workplaces throughout the region. I am not proposing another top-down, one-time visioning process. It must be an ongoing effort involving thousands of citizens and building a broad and diverse constituency of informed regional citizens strong enough to push through and sustain real change at the regional level.

Imagine a multicultural alliance of political, business, and community leaders coming together to ensure that no one is left behind at the starting gate of the information superhighway. I see leaders throughout the region committing to work together so that all of our people in every part of this region share in the benefits of the global marketplace. I see an organization capable of making the connections among the region’s problem-solvers, thus restoring hope and making it possible to transform our politics.

Imagine the White House, the Cabinet departments, and the Congress making a commitment to meet President Kennedy’s challenge that Washington be the finest region in the world.

Imagine the presidents of the region’s universities coming together to offer the expertise of their faculties to work on the region’s most difficult problems from jobs to water, and from crime to transportation.

Imagine some of the leading professional associations -- lawyers, accountants, doctors, and engineers -- organizing their members and applying their skills to our toughest problems. Our health professionals in the private, public, and non-profit sectors should pledge whatever is needed to ensure every child in this region has an opportunity to live a healthy life.

Imagine the region’s technology companies and federal labs responding to the leadership of The Potomac KnowledgeWay Project and dedicating themselves to making the Washington region the center of entrepreneurship in the world.

Imagine one of the world’s great international newspapers acting as if the region mattered, providing the information and support needed to help build a public constituency for a politics that thinks and acts regionally. I see The Washington Post devoting the resources needed to tell its readers the new story of the Washington region with all its challenges and possibilities.

Imagine WETA and the region’s other public broadcasting and community cable channels collaborating to produce a special on “Washington in the Twenty-First Century” complete with a series of town meetings throughout the region. I see our local papers and nightly television news refocusing their attention away from the sensationalism of trivial curiosities to the important substance that affects our daily lives. Wouldn’t we all like to see these news editors abandon their longstanding “If it bleeds, it leads. If it thinks, it stinks” policy?

Imagine some of the region’s very successful advocacy and communication firms taking a bit of their time and talent away from their special interest pleading and devoting it to bringing this region together. Think what could happen if some of the world’s most talented communicators would help our citizens define a positive future for our region.

Imagine the foundations of the region joining together to invest just a tiny portion of their resources each year to strengthening our civic infrastructure so that all this could happen.

Imagine if all of these efforts created a shared vision that enabled our political, business, and community leaders to speak with one voice in support of a common political agenda for the region each year in Congress and in Annapolis and Richmond.

You don’t have to just imagine. All this can happen. We can transform our region from one now drifting to mediocrity to the greatest place to live and work and play anywhere on this earth. The resources are here. The talents are here. We have the capacity to restore hope and get results if only we can muster the vision and the will.

Citizenship is not a spectator sport. On becoming a citizen of Athens, every young person made a pledge that “in all these ways we will transmit this city not only not less but greater and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.” This is the pledge we must all make. It is our obligation to our children, our grandchildren, and to their children.