WASHINGTON -- Las Vegas has mini-embassies in three countries and Orlando, Fla., boasts its own foreign policy. Denver helps support a trade mission in London.
To compete in the increasingly intertwined world economy, many American cities and towns are developing new ways of promoting themselves by going global.The stakes are high.
Whether a city competes for a factory, a major convention, tourism dollars, or export markets for its own businesses, the way it reaches abroad can mean the differences between success and failure.
As the global marketplace has become more cosmopolitan, cities must possess world-class resources or lose out to their rivals at home and abroad.
City activities in the global arena include maintaining sister-city relationships with foreign towns, promoting exports, working with their state trade offices, helping local businesses to secure new foreign markets and a variety of cultural activities, according to a survey by the National League of Cities.
"The world may appear to be getting smaller in many ways, but for leaders who want to move their cities ahead, the horizon looks bigger and wider than ever," said Brian O'Neil, president of the league and a Philadelphia city councilman.
"While our interests may be local, things in distant places can help make our own cities prosper or languish depending on what they do," O'Neil said.
In recent years, his organization, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Counties have been urging their members to think globally in developing their economic strategies and share experiences.
Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood helped establish the Metro Orlando International Affairs Commission to coordinate global activities by government and industry in central Florida.
"The commission is an example of what I call local-based foreign policy aimed at building global economic linkages," she told an international symposium earlier this year. "If we consider ourselves global players, then we'll act that way."
Asked how her region had benefited from this approach, she said the Commerce Department reported that the Orlando region "was by far the fastest growing major export market in the state of Florida. Exports are our newest billion dollar industry."
Hood said Orlando area businesses were building convention centers in Brazil, providing medical services and managing in Mexico and advising on theme park construction in China.
"When you look at the manifest of a plane leaving from our airport, you see products ranging from aircraft components and computer equipment to ferns and ornamental plants heading overseas," she said.
The U.N. Conference on Trade and Development reported that the United States ranks No. 1 in direct investment by foreign-owned companies, with $91 billion flowing in last year. Five million Americans now work for foreign-owned firms and generally receive higher wages than their counterparts at domestic firms, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says.
Metropolitan regions are spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually in programs and incentives to attract this direct investment to their jurisdictions to create jobs, diversify their economies and enhance tax revenues.
Part of being a big-city mayor these days involves leading trade missions overseas. Smaller cities send officials on trips sponsored by the National League of Cities or the mayors' conference.
Besides trade missions, some cities have used their sister or twinning relationship with overseas towns to build economic and commercial bridges into international markets.
Cities generally rely on their state offices, U.S. embassies and more than 130 offices of the Commerce Department's U.S. Foreign and Commercial Service in approximately 70 countries to represent their economic interests abroad.
However, Denver contributes $50,000 a year to the Colorado Trade Mission in London to help market the city. Mayor Wellington Webb credits the trade office for decisions by two British high-technology consulting firms to establish their U.S. headquarters in Denver.
Some cities take a more direct approach. The Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority maintains representative bureaus in Tokyo, Frankfurt, Germany, and England's West Midlands region.