The Brookings Institution, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Alfred Herrhausen Society and TIME Magazine host the Global Metro Summit: Delivering the Next Economy, a two-day programme exploring the drivers of urban economic transformation The Global Metro Summit featured new economic trends analysis and research, unveiling a powerful vision for the post-recession economy that is export-oriented, low carbon, innovation-fueled, opportunity rich and ultimately led by metropolitan areas.

Over 500 people attended Summit bringing together over 50 innovative speakers including half a dozen mayors, leading policy makers, representatives from the White House, academics and philanthropists from around the world to discuss the next urban economy.

The “Great Recession” has dramatically disrupted the lives and livelihoods of millions of global citizens and upended global markets and key sectors of the economy. With a stubbornly sluggish recovery, brutal fiscal challenges, new energy and environmental imperatives, and sweeping demographic changes, our nation needs a new model for growth that creates jobs in the near term while restructuring the economy for the long haul.

What would this reset look like? Top economists, such as National Economic Council Chairman Larry Summers, think the shape of the next American economy must be more export-oriented, low carbon, innovation-fueled and opportunity rich. This is a vision where we export more and waste less, innovate in what matters, produce and deploy more of what we invent, and deliver an educated and skilled workforce.

The organizers of the Global Metro Summit also believe that the next economy will be led by metropolitan areas. They are the hubs of trade, commerce and migration and the centers for talent, capital, and innovation. They contain the infrastructure to move people, goods, ideas and energy efficiently and the institutions to educate and train the workforce of the future. To build the next economy, the United States must connect the macro global vision to the metro reality – the macro to the metro. To further expound on this vision, the Global Metro Summit gathered leading thinkers and practitioners from around the globe to explore the future of the next metropolitan economy.

Listen and engage as we:

• Unveil an affirmative vision of the next economy — one which must be more export-oriented, low carbon, innovation-fueled and opportunity rich and ultimately led by metro areas.
• Showcase a “pragmatic caucus” of leaders —private sector, civic, local elected, and nonprofit— who are coming together to build that post-recession future, including those who have build bottoms-up “metropolitan business plans”.
• Learn from successful metropolitan leaders from Europe and Asia to show that intentional regional economic transformation with state and federal partners is possible and can have positive outcomes.