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Since February 2020, severe economic disruption, policy responses, and behavioral shifts have created an uncertain economic future at the global, national, state, and local levels. In the context of this uncertainty, private and governmental decisions need the best available forecasts of long-term economic and demographic growth and change, and a regional economic modeling framework that allows model users to develop alternative forecasts. This commentary provides 10-year economic and population forecasts for the top 20 U.S. metropolitan areas, using REMI—a comprehensive economic/demographic forecasting model. While it focuses on metropolitan areas, the fundamental demographic and economic factors that guide the future of a region are the same. States, cities, and rural areas have underlying demographic and economic forces that will determine their destiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a general new economic geography model with multiple industries and regions, full labor and capital mobility, land use in production and consumption, and a dynamic adjustment process in which consumers maximize utility and firms respond to nonzero profits. All industries use intermediate inputs as well as land, labor, and capital. Systems of cities form endogenously within this framework, including asymmetrical urban hierarchies and cities of different sizes and industry compositions. Each urban area has a bid-rent gradient and zones with land uses and densities as in the yon Thunen model. The equilibrium depends not only on initial conditions but also on speeds of adjustment. The model is a prototype for empirical implementation, as illustrated with a simulation of the effects of transportation cost reductions., In this paper we present a general new economic geography model with multiple industries and regions, full labor and capital mobility, land use in production and consumption, and a dynamic adjustment process in which consumers maximize utility and firms respond to nonzero profits. All industries use intermediate inputs as well as land, labor, and capital. Systems of cities form endogenously within this framework, including asymmetrical urban hierarchies and cities of different sizes and industry compositions. Each urban area has a bid-rent gradient and zones with land uses and densities as in the yon Thunen model. The equilibrium depends not only on initial conditions but also on speeds of adjustment. The model is a prototype for empirical implementation, as illustrated with a simulation of the effects of transportation cost reductions.