Metro Areas Organizing Themselves Towards Regional Goals

These communities are taking their lead from cities in the Intermountain West, where inter-metropolitan self-organization has resulted in such projects as the Denver area's FasTracks rail system.

"Now the sometimes fractious Sun Corridor of Arizona has become a hot spot of self-organized super-regionalism. Putting aside petty inter-metropolitan rivalries, leaders from Phoenix, Tucson, and other locales in the Arizona urban super-zone have increasingly been finding ways to work together--though not by fiat from some higher authority.

Prime past examples of the new spirit include the new joint University of Arizona-Arizona State University (ASU) Medical School in downtown Phoenix and the nationally significant Science Foundation Arizona (SFAz) initiative. SFAz--initiated in the spring of 2006 by the three statewide CEO groups, the Flagstaff 40, Greater Phoenix

Leadership, and Southern Arizona Leadership Council--represents a unique multi-metro public/private push to make serious investments in the region's innovation capacity."