Every year, the Urban Studies Program at the University of Washington Tacoma holds an urban forum on issues of critical importance to the broader community. Recent Federal transportation reforms provide an interesting moment to rethink and re-imagine policy formulation and performance measurement between federal, state and local governments. This coming year, participants representing the four-county Puget Sound Region, Urban Studies faculty, students, staff, and national transportation experts will explore the trends, challenges, and new possibilities associated with urban transportation policy coordination and institutional leadership both here in the Puget Sound Region and across the United States. A feature this year is that we are working closely with the Puget Sound Regional Council in planning the event.

The goal of this one-day event is to stimulate fresh conversations about national, state and regional challenges in transportation investments, with special attention paid to how these investments can better support emerging economic trends in the overall metropolitan region. The topics of the forum will include: The relationship between transportation policies, infrastructure investments, and the Puget Sound region's emerging metropolitan economy A keynote address by Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution on national economic and transportation trends 'Learning from others?' looking at alternative approaches and strategies to intergovernmental transportation coordination, leadership, and especially investments based on the experience of other metropolitan regions in the U.S.