In December 2003, the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy released a major report on the challenges and opportunities for Pennsylvania’s economic future, called Back to Prosperity: A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania. The report, funded by The Heinz Endowments and the William Penn Foundation, was aided by 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania. 10,000 Friends contributed research on state spending, organized listening sessions throughout the state to give support to the development of the report, and helped facilitate the report’s release.
Back to Prosperity contends that the economic future of Pennsylvania depends on providing opportunities for our young people to stay, live and work here, and curbing what has turned out to be some of the nation's most radical patterns of sprawl and abandonment. Our highly decentralized growth patterns are weakening the state's established communities, undercutting the very places whose assets the state needs in order to compete in establishing a strong position in the 21st-century marketplace. The report concludes that we have opportunities to reshape these trends, but only if we embrace a dynamic new vision of economic competitiveness linked to the revival of our older cities and towns. As a next step, 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania has announced the launch of a statewide initiative called, "The Campaign to Renew Pennsylvania," or "RenewPA, for short." RenewPA is the Pennsylvania response to the issues raised in the report. For more details about the campaign, visit the Campaign website.
