Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and ASU President Michael Crow spoke at the Downtown Phoenix campus Friday on how to handle the state’s future growth and the federal government’s role in expansion.

The discussion centered on the Sun Corridor, a region that includes Tucson and Phoenix, and how policy makers can aid in its prosperity.

This region faces infrastructure, economic, human-capital and sustainability challenges that threaten its future prosperity, Crow said. As the population grows, the region will reach social and economic critical mass, he said.

“We are sitting on a precipice,” Crow said. “This economy is on a path to reduced economic contribution. It is one of the places the future of the U.S. will be determined.”

With the region continuing to grow at a fast rate, Napolitano said it is important to have a long-term vision for the state and a strong partnership with the federal government.

“It’s not just about jobs. It’s about futures,” Napolitano said. “We need to think of things more qualitatively. That is a much more challenging thought for us.”

Napolitano hinted at a second economic stimulus program that could come out of Washington with the new administration. Napolitano urged the policymakers and their staffers in the room to advocate for part of the possible stimulus package to be regionally based.

“Make sure the next big money [bailout] coming out of Washington stimulates this region,” Napolitano said. “It might be the last time in a long time we get any money.”

The forum comes on the heels of a recent report released by the Brookings Institution — “Mountain Megas: America’s Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper.”

The report describes and assesses the new reality of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Nevada and proposes a more helpful role for the federal government in empowering regional leaders’ efforts to build a uniquely Western brand of prosperity.

“When we work together with the federal government, things work,” Gordon said.

The Brookings report focuses on the concept of megapolitans — vast, newly recognized “super regions” that often combine two or more metropolitan areas into a single huge economic, social and urban system.

It is a concept the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at ASU has been developing for years, said Nancy Welch, associate director of the Morrison Institute. She helped author the first comprehensive analysis of the Sun Corridor megapolitan area, which includes the region between Prescott and Santa Cruz and Cochise counties in southern Arizona.

The Sun Corridor is made up of six counties comprising 87 percent of the population and 90 percent of the gross domestic product of Arizona, said Robert Lang, senior Brookings fellow and director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. The Sun Corridor is one of the fastest growing megapolitans in the country, Welch said.

“The megapolitan issue is an extension of concerns about urban growth,” Welch said. “We introduced the concept to Arizona.”

One of the ways proposed at the meeting to deal with this urban growth is the creation of a direct freeway connecting Phoenix and Las Vegas, as well as a railway connecting Phoenix and Los Angeles and Phoenix and Tucson, said Mark Muro, the Metropolitan Policy Program director at Brookings.

“The Sun Corridor is a test bed,” Muro said at the forum. “The Phoenix freeway links are high on the face of national interest.”

Looking forward, a strong strategic, evidence-based program is needed to ensure the region’s sustainability, Muro said. A strong relationship with the federal government would empower and maximize the performance of the Sun Corridor, he said.

“No matter how much the Sun Corridor innovates, it does not have the resources, powers or discretion to go it alone,” Muro said.

Reach the reporter at philip.haldiman@asu.edu.