Regional/Greater Community Development News – October 29, 2012


    Multi-jurisdictional intentional regional communities are, in all cases, “Greater Communities” where “community motive” is at work at a more than a local scale. This newsletter provides a scan of regional community, cooperation and collaboration activity as reported in news media and blogs.
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Top 10 Stories
Rather than selling themselves at a discount — cheap land and cheap labor and  tax giveaways – most highly successful cities are investing in better workers,  high-quality universities, quality of life and efficient public services.
Here’s our start on economic development priorities for the planned plan for Memphis and Shelby:
• Investments in Universities. …
• Redevelopment in the Urban Core. …
• Balanced Transportation Policy. …
• Technology Clusters. …
• Local Innovation. …
• Understanding Our Competitive Context.  Memphis starts by  understanding its competitive context, including market and demographic trends  in the region and its strengths and weaknesses. Most of all, we need to use new  measures that matter in the knowledge economy rather than on the indicators from  old-style economic development. Memphis can find its distinctive niche to leap  frog ahead of other cities, but it must be equally based on solid research and  imaginative strategies.
• Fixing the Basics. …
• Acting (As Well As Talking) Regionally. Memphis talks a  good game of regionalism, but we’ve never truly engrained regional thinking into  our plans and actions. Too often, we lapse into “we versus them” and “if you’re  winning, we must be losing” attitudes. Economic activity and innovation occur in  a regional context, and we ignore this at our peril. It is increasingly clear  that Memphis and its suburbs are inextricably linked into a single economic unit, and Memphis shouldn’t be the only city in the region saying this.
• Vibrant Culture and Entertainment Centers. …
• Thinking and Acting Collaboratively. This requires a shift in leadership styles from traditional authoritarian models to a new environment  of inclusion, mutual influence and community building. Opening the door wider to all segments of the community and inviting new voices to engage in decision-making is the mark of a mature and competitive city. Most of all, we  must rid the halls of government with their “it’s not your time yet” responses  to any initiative shown by young leaders.
• A 21st Century Workforce. …
• Competition on a Global Scale. …
• High-Quality Eco-Assets. …
• A Reputation for Tolerance. …
I recently dined with a senior City of Edmonton manager, part of the leadership group around City Manager Simon Farbrother that’s getting a great deal done.
We talked about global energy/petro-chemical companies, how decisions are made about where multi-billion dollar plants will be built.
“We’re part of the Pacific rim,” our manager said. “The guy making that decision is based in Shanghai or Beijing. He’s deciding if that plant should be built in China, somewhere else in Asia, Canada, the USA or Mexico. His only interest is the well-being of the company he works for.
“He has hundreds of options – countries and states and cities are all offering economic incentives.
“If we (Greater Edmonton) want to compete, we have to have the complete package – land fully serviced and ready to go, feedstock, infrastructure, labour, financing, tax incentives. In fact, we have to offer more. Their future consumers are all over there, not here.
“How do we compete,” he said, pointing his fork at my nose, “when we don’t have a single economic development agency for the region? How do we compete when 24 regional municipalities spend more time coming to a consensus than they do pursuing the prize?
“Our political structure,” he concluded, “is built for failure. When a third of the population of Greater Edmonton lives outside the city’s borders, getting things done quickly, making decisions quickly, competing on that global scale, is near impossible.”
“The Way We Prosper” is the economic development component of an overall planning exercise by the city.
A report into Wellington’s local government structure has recommended a total overhaul, including a new Lord Mayor and one powerful council governing six smaller councils.
The report slams current structures in the Wellington area, saying the region has “lost its way” and needs to be “reborn”.
Collated by the Wellington Region Local Government Review Panel, the report recommends the region’s nine councils be legally dismantled and replaced by the new structure.
This means the 107 current elected councillors would be reduced to 79 and the nine chief executives would be reduced to one.
Under the plan, the Greater Wellington Regional Council will become a new Greater Wellington Council led by an elected Lord Mayor.
The eight remaining councils would become six ‘local area councils’ tiered underneath the new main council with the task of managing local issues.
In Wairarapa, the three current district councils would be merged into one local area council.
A political paradigm has shifted, and 24 towns in St. Louis County are reaping the benefits.
Fragmentation and self-imposed isolation have long been norms in the countryside that rings St. Louis city. The city itself set that tone in 1876, when it broke away from the jurisdiction of St. Louis County because city residents were disinclined to continue subsidizing their “hillbilly” counterparts.
Modern discussions about reuniting the city and county plod on, but 24 St. Louis County towns aren’t waiting around. They’ve stuck out their necks and are giving berth to several new concepts and processes that have lowered municipal expenses only as a first step.
Just as importantly, according to Chris Krehmeyer, the new thinking is improving the standard of living of residents by providing affordable housing, supporting children’s education and ensuring access to healthy lifestyle choices and health care.
Krehmeyer is the president and chief executive officer of Beyond Housing. The community support organization counts among its successes improving the affordable housing market in a number of cities in the region in defiance of the subprime mortgage mess and subsequent recession.
CAPITAL REGION — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday continued his statewide Regional Economic Development Council (REDC) Progress Tour in the Capital Region, where he visited projects to see their progress and their economic impact in the region.
It was the fifth visit in the governor's REDC Progress Tour, which is part of a review of last year's strategic economic development plans and job-creating projects.
"Under the Regional Council process, which has given individual regions the power to shape their own economic trajectory, New York State no longer has a top-down approach when it comes to economic development," Governor Cuomo said. "The Capital Region is putting their own strategic plan to action and growing jobs and businesses in their communities."
"Today Governor Cuomo, Lt. Governor Duffy, and the Strategic Implementation Assessment Team saw first-hand that, through this regional economic development process, we are successfully collaborating across sectors and regions to strengthen the Capital Region economic ecosystem, thereby maintaining and creating jobs, preparing and retaining the workforce, and celebrating and strengthening our communities," said Regional Council Co-Chair and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President Dr. Shirley Jackson.
"Guided by our strategic plan, the Council is engaging with business, education, government, and other community leaders across our 8 county region, working together to lay the foundation for long-term economic security."
When the One Region organization recently published its 2012 analysis of 10 key indicators of the quality of life in Northwest Indiana, I joined other region residents in studying the valuable information.
This report presents an honest analysis of where we stand as a region with an unbiased assessment of our many positive points and where we have room for improvement. It’s an ideal reference for Northwest Indiana leaders and concerned citizens to help us plan for the future.
The People chapter states, “We aspire to be a region that is diverse and values inclusion.” This chapter contains an in-depth look at the demographics of Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties.
Our region has seen some amazing changes in the past few decades. An industrial giant for years, it has undergone countless changes as times and people changed.
Region residents moved from our urban core to the developing suburbs. As roads improved, people who no longer needed to live close to their jobs moved to spacious new suburban neighborhoods in Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties.
Our families have changed, too. We see fewer households with married couples and more single-parent families. More people live alone.
We’re getting older. Our median age in Northwest Indiana has increased from 36.4 years in 2000 to 38.5 in 2010. This trend could have serious implications on region business, employment, health care, education and infrastructure in coming years.
However, our racial and ethnic diversity has seen little change. In 2010 whites continue to account for most of our area population,  the African-American population was about the same as it was in the 2006 report at 19 percent, and the Hispanic population grew a few percentage points to 13 percent.
The report reminds us that Northwest Indiana has an amazing diversity of races, ethnic heritage, politics, ages and incomes. A diverse population is an asset for any community.
England's regions can no longer rely on handouts from tax receipts collected in the City, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said as he announced Government plans to hand more local authorities, including Sunderland and Tees Valley, wider spending powers.
A selected group of 20 cities and regions could be exempt from meeting strict diktats from Whitehall as part of plans to give some councils the right to spend tax revenues collected by companies based in their area.
Ministers have already handed eight cities, including Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle, more powers over strategic planning decisions and transport budgets. Now they plan to allow 20 other towns, cities and regions the right to bid for increased powers.
But, as the list was announced, Mr Clegg warned the successful councils they can no longer rely on Government handouts for major infrastructure projects which were paid for by large tax receipts collected within the Square Mile.
"You can't revive the regions just through handouts from Whitehall. Certainly not now when the Treasury's coffers are bare. And even if we did have lots of money, the previous approach was fundamentally flawed," he said.
"Revenues from the financial services sector were recycled round the rest of the country through the long arm of the state, creating the illusion of strong, national growth. Jobs were created but in an unbalanced way, over-relying on the public sector, funded by tax receipts from the City of London.
REMEMBER when we were all passionate people living in a passionate place?
One of the real legacy projects of regional development agency One North East was the excellent regional image campaign, which seemed to receive buy-in from the entire region.
“Passionate People, Passionate Places” was a wonderful campaign and showcased what an amazing region the North East is to live, work and visit – we always knew it here in the region, but it was great that the message was being carried outside our boundaries.
Sadly the campaign was a casualty of the public sector cuts and when the RDAs days were numbered so was the campaign, or was it?
Momentum may have been lost when One North East closed, but there is no reason why the businesses, public bodies, education establishments and any Joe Public with a passion for the region can’t continue to carry that message.
We must continue to talk our region up here in the North East, nationally and internationally.
The abolition in principle of regional bureaus of central government ministries is a pillar of the DPJ-led government's policy of pushing devolution. Of some 300,000 national public servants, nearly 200,000 belong to regional bureaus of central government ministries. The first step toward the abolition of regional bureaus is the transfer of regional bureaus of the infrastructure and transport ministry, the trade and industry ministry and the Environment Ministry to regional federations of local governments. But the Cabinet has not yet endorsed a bill for the transfer — a step needed for submission of the bill to the Diet.
The main purpose of the transfer of regional bureaus of the three ministries is to eradicate overlapping of administration between the ministries and local governments. The transfer must be designed to contribute to increasing efficiency and ending the wasteful use of funds, personnel and other resources. But the new setup must be capable of quickly and properly meeting the needs of local governments and residents. This will not be an easy task.
The main reason for the delay of the bill's submission to the Diet is that many municipalities are opposed to the transfer of regional bureaus because they saw the Tohoku Regional Development Bureau of the infrastructure and transport ministry play an important role in the rescue and restoration work in the aftermath of the 3/11 disasters.
The cities, towns and villages fear that if regional development bureaus are transferred to regional federations, they may not be able to promptly take necessary actions to fulfill their duties in a variety of areas including infrastructure construction and disaster prevention. In August, a group of some 500 city, town and village mayors adopted a resolution opposing the transfer of regional bureaus.
MOUNTAIN Gorillas, hippos and various bird species are some of the most common tourist attractions in Virunga National Park.
The park covers approximately790, 000 hectares of forest in the three countries of Rwanda, Uganda the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
According to figures from Rwanda Development Board (RDB), last year tourism sector generated US$253 million.
The population in the vicinity of the national park has over the years closely worked together to conserve it. But stray animals that destroy crops pose a major threat to the communities.
Recently residents living around the park, in Rwanda and DRC, built 2 kilometres parameter of stones and a trench to deter stray buffaloes and other wild animals which destroy crops whenever they come out of the park.
"It is a way of ensuring that residents do not lose their harvests as a result of wildlife," says Sam Mwandha, the Executive Secretary of Greater Virunga Trans-boundary Collaboration (GVTC).
A mechanism to coordinate joint conservation efforts in the park is underway under which the government engages other partners both at the national and regional levels.
EXTRA
Elizabeth Fretwell was sworn in as city manager of Las Vegas in January 2009. In what can only be described as a bout of very bad timing, at that moment, Las Vegas was on the front edge of a precipitous fall-off in city revenues.
As consumer spending dropped in response to the onset of the crisis, first to drop were revenues from a state-administered tax that includes levies on sales of liquor, cigarettes and other goods, as well as real estate transfers. Before long, city revenues from the property tax followed suit as real estate values in the city began to plummet. In the downtown area alone, the assessed value of land and buildings dropped by $1 billion from its peak between 2008 and 2010.
In all, the City of Las Vegas saw a 20 percent decline in revenues in just two years.
In Washington, D.C., and in state capitals across the country, policymakers would respond to a similar declines with a mix of budget cuts and revenue fixes to try and draw in money from other sources. But in Las Vegas, budget cuts were the only available answer.
That's because when it comes to raising revenues, the city’s hands are tied. Local governments in Nevada control just 13 percent of their revenues; the remaining 87 percent are determined by state formulas. As a result, Fretwell had no alternative: she cut 615 positions in city government, amounting to one in five workers. Local government also moved to a cheaper City Hall building, while slashing funds for everything from education and health care and parks.  
Las Vegas is hardly alone in its inability to develop reliable revenue streams that can support local priorities through good times and bad. Indeed, most cities are highly constrained in what they can do by state laws that place limits on local government taxing and spending authority.
SAULT STE. MARIE, MI - The Upper Peninsula Economic Development Alliance, in partnership with the sister cities of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. and Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., are hosting a Conference on Bi-National Regional Collaboration yesterday and today, with events taking place on both sides of the border.
“Bi-national regional cooperation and collaboration are becoming more and important to successful economic development,” stated Kim Stoker executive director of UPEDA. “Our conference will highlight economic areas that have high potential for enhanced bi-national collaboration and future initiatives.”
Conference sponsors, in addition to the hosting organizations, include the Sault Ste. Marie (Ontario) Economic Development Corp., U.S. Economic Development Administration, Eastern Upper Peninsula Regional Planning and Development Commission, Lake Superior State University, and the Michigan State University Center for Community and Economic Development, MSU Canadian Studies Center, MSU Institute of Public Policy and Social Research, and the Great Lakes International Trade and Transportation Hub (GLITTH).


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Regional/Greater Community Development News – October 22, 2012


    Multi-jurisdictional intentional regional communities are, in all cases, “Greater Communities” where “community motive” is at work at a more than a local scale. This newsletter provides a scan of regional community, cooperation and collaboration activity as reported in news media and blogs.
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Top 10 Stories
The president of the American Planning Association, Mitchell Silver, was here last week for his organization’s regional conference. But according to his forecast of where the country’s going, he was visiting the land that’s being left behind.
Silver, who honed his planning chops in New York and Washington before becoming the chief planning an economic development officer for Raleigh, N.C., certainly didn’t insult his hosts at the 2012 KS/MO Bi-state Conference and the 300 folks in the audience from a four-state region that included Iowa and Nebraska.
He let his Power Point presentation do the talking.
Silver projected the major job growth will be concentrated in 11 “mega-regions” by 2050. Kansas City and other metros in the middle of the country weren’t among them.
The closest mega-regions were called the Great Lakes centered on Chicago, the Front Range anchored by Denver, and the Texas Triangle encompassing Dallas, Austin and Houston.
Kansas City also didn’t make a list of promising metros that Silver divided into three categories: international hubs; creative and nimble; and comeback kids. Minneapolis-St. Paul was in the creative and nimble group, the sole regional metro to make the list.
The antidote for a greater Kansas City suggested by Silver is something we’ve all heard before.
“The future of the country is the metropolitan economy,” he said. “You must compete as a region, not Kansas City, Missouri or Kansas.
“People will pass you over and you’ll just trade jobs.”
Last week, I got a shot of hope.
It happens so infrequently that I had to lie down for a while to recover.
The event that produced this strange reaction was a "press familiarization tour" to highlight the wonders of "St. Paul on the Move." It was sponsored by the Minneapolis Saint Paul Regional Economic Development Partnership, which calls itself Greater MSP. The mission of this 18-month-old chamber-of-commerce-like group is to sell companies on locating in the 13-county metro (and incidentally hiring lots of people).
In the interest of transparency, I feel compelled to inform readers that MSP paid for my lunch at Muffuletta ($8.95 plus coffee, tax and tip), hauled me and other ink-stained wretches around in a minivan and gave us each a free notebook. I don't think any of that, however, was responsible for most of my positivity.
Meanwhile, back at the tour. Over cups of Caribou (I forgot about them -- add $2), Doug Baker, MSP's chair and CEO of Ecolab, a St. Paul water-safety company, gave us the pitch. Instead of having every city in the metro compete for businesses, MSP plans to brand and market the entire region on the theory that a corporation moving to Belle Plaine indirectly benefits people in Brooklyn Center or Eden Prairie. But Baker is also a big downtown booster. "If you give up on the center, you give up on the whole community," he said.
That statement alone evoked Surge of Optimism #1. Why? Because any number of people kiss off our two core cities as though they are the geographic version of the buggy whip. Typical example from some recent Internet postings: "When will Minneapolis -- and St. Paul -- acknowledge that the pre-WWII model of downtown is DEAD?" It was good to hear from a captain of technology that he thinks the center (or in this case, centers) can -- and must -- hold.
Surge of Optimism #2 came with a visit to the offices of the Met Council where Mark Fuhrmann, the manager of all the light rail programs, gave us a rundown on the 18 stations of the Central Corridor LRT due to begin operations in 2014.
… Institute planners emphasized four key considerations in shaping the framework of the Rural Futures Institute:
1.       Transdisciplinary work is essential. To be successful, the Institute will have to transcend traditional boundaries of academic disciplines while respecting the expertise specific disciplines contribute.
2.      Innovation and entrepreneurship are crucial. This goes beyond private sector business considerations. The Institute should attempt to draw from the region’s long history of innovative thinking to leverage further creativity and entrepreneurial activity throughout the region, as well as within the University itself.
3.      It is more than economics. Health care, education, civic culture, and the arts are critical elements of community life and must be part of the fabric of the Institute, even though they often cannot be measured or justified in a strictly economic context.
4.      Deep collaborations are a foundational element. Despite challenges associated with institutional collaborations, the Rural Futures Institute will succeed only if it can foster and engage in meaningful partnerships within the University and with the many non-academic stakeholders in the nonprofit, government, and private sectors that have resources and expertise to contribute to the issues at hand.”

 — Promoters of economic growth along the California-Mexico border on Monday unveiled their newest push to bring investments and jobs to the region: a binational, online map.
Developers of the asset map hope it will send a powerful message to the world about offerings in what’s called the Cali Baja Bi-National Mega-Region, from manufacturing know-how to integrated supply chains to a skilled labor force. They aim to jointly showcase Baja California and San Diego and Imperial counties, an area of nearly 29,000 square miles with a combined annual gross domestic product of $202.4 billion and a labor force of 3.1 million, according to the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation.
The map, which is displayed at calibaja.net, shows “we are stronger together than we are just by ourselves,” said Christina Luhn, director of the Mega-Region Initiative for the EDC. “This puts us on the map in a different way.”
Introduction and summary

America’s energy future is at a crossroads. Everyone can agree that we must reduce our dependence on foreign oil while strengthening our economy and creating jobs. But how do we get there?
In contrast, the vision for America presented by the American Petroleum Institute and its supporters in Washington and across the country embraces a “drill-here, drill-now” agenda without regard to the long-term economic and environmental consequences or to the specific needs of America’s diverse regional economies. It ultimately is a shortsighted strategy that will not work. Diversifying away from these fossil fuels is an urgent and essential step to ensuring our long-term climate stability and economic competitiveness.

This report focuses on non-fossil-fuel-driven economic development strategies in six major regions of the country. Specifically:
§  Offshore wind on the Atlantic Coast
§  Coastal restoration in the Gulf Coast
§  Energy efficiency in the Southeast
§  Advanced vehicles in the Midwest
§  Wind power and solar power development and distribution in the Mountain West
§  Solar power innovation and installation on the Pacific Coast
A month or so ago, hundreds of people packed into the Lyceum at East Mississippi Community College's Mayhew campus for the unveiling of what we now know as the Golden Triangle Regional Development Authority.
With great fanfare, the new group's steering committee, under the guidance of Columbus-Lowndes Development Link CEO Joe Max Higgins, presented its plans before an appreciative audience.
It was pretty obvious from the presentation that the group had meticulous plans for how the new economic development partnership would be created. Among the material was an implementation schedule, something Higgins took great care to explain. The project that began in September would culminate with a fully-functional GTRDA in October 2014.
One of the first things on the schedule was obtaining contracts from Oktibbeha County/Starkville, similar to the one in place between the Link and the West Point Growth Alliance. During the presentation, and in subsequent public comments, this first step seemed to be little more than a formality.
While there is nothing to suggest that Oktibbeha County and Starkville will decline to sign on -- killing the plan before it really started -- there are some indications that getting that approval may take some doing.
From 1989 to 1999, I worked for a newspaper in Lakeville, a fourth tier suburb of Minneapolis, MN that grew from a population of 24,000 when I started, to more than 43,000 by the time I left. 
I was thinking about Lakeville as I watched "The New Metropolis," a documentary shown…at the Farmington Civic Theater. The event, organized by the Multiracial Multicultural Community Council, included a panel discussion with local and state officials. 
The Twin Cities metropolitan area was held up as a model of regionalism, and that resonated with me. I recall writing about the city's growing pains, major school boundary adjustments, massive voter-approved construction projects. And city officials worked closely with the Metropolitan Council, a regional planning agency that coordinates planning and development in the 7-county, Twin Cities metropolitan area.
What city government, school officials and regional planners couldn't do was help people come to terms with the increasing diversity…
Yesterday’s regional elections in Spain’s Basque region have demonstrated again the strength of blood ties and the resurgence of localism in a time of globalization. People are increasingly seeking protection close to home, an urge that seems light years away from the European Union’s postmodern supranational ambitions.
The good news is that, these days, the push for local autonomy comes without violence. But if the Basque country has moved beyond the separatist terrorism of the ETA, the strong showing by the pro-independence party Bildu means that assertive regionalism now means taking over real political responsibility. It is no longer a game or a claim without consequences, where being “against” the central power is the only goal and thus sufficient.
… The question is whether the Basques, and Spain’s Catalonians, who are also pushing for a referendum on independence, know it. What drives the recent Catalonian claims for independence is the feeling that the region is oppressed by Madrid, in particular that it pays much too much in taxes to a dysfunctional central government, which then redistributes the region’s wealth to the rest of the country. Catalonians would be better off, they think, if they were to leave the Spanish state.
In this, the Catalonians join a growing club of wealthier regions across the EU that want to quit their nation states in order to escape financial transfers and solidarity with the poorer parts of their respective countries. “Bavaria Can Go It Alone” is the title of a recent book from an influential Bavarian politician, who argues that the time has come for Bavaria to stop paying 15 percent of its tax revenue to the German federal government. Italy’s Lega Nord, rooted in prosperous Northern Italy, ...
The Commerce Ministry may seek funding from the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) to build a large rice silo in a move to establish Thailand as a food stockpiler for the world.
Commerce Minister Boonsong Teriyapirom said Thailand is in a very good position to become a stockpiler that can ensure the world's food security.
Food security was highlighted at a recent ACD summit in Kuwait.
The ACD was created in 2002 to promote Asian cooperation at a continental level and to help integrate regional cooperation among organisations such as Asean, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
The ACD was founded by 18 members and now comprises 31 states including all Asean and GCC members. It covers 60% of the world's population.
At the summit, Kuwait proposed setting up a US$2-billion development fund for members under the ACD framework by initially offering seed money of $300 million through the Asian Development Bank.
Mr Boonsong said Thailand is interested in securing that fund to create food security for Thailand and the world.
"Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has assigned the Commerce, Industry and Foreign ministries to monitor the fund closely in order to determine how Thailand can secure finance for a large rice silo that can stock rice for seven or eight years," he said.
Sustainable business is not only essential to the future of Alpine mountain regions, but it helps businesses prosper, is the message from theALPS 2012 conference held earlier this month in Innsbruck, Austria.
"Tourism has entered the sustainability debate at a relatively late stage," said Dr Franz Fischler, former EU Agriculture Commissioner and now President of the European Forum Alpbach, "but Alpine tourism can be at the vanguard and lead the way,"
Futurologist Peter Wipperman, trend researcher and lecturer in Communication Design at the Folkwang University in Essen, said that from 2009-2011, in the midst of recession, consumers turned to suppliers and business that they had confidence in; in many cases being prepared to pay more for items with strong ethical and sustainable credentials. "You can't buy people's trust," Wipperman said, "and consumers are increasingly asking questions about the people and the values behind the brands: how things are produced, the effects of the environment, and whether employees are happy."
Petra Stolba, Managing Director of Österreich Werbung, is convinced: "Sustainability must be a core value in tourism and thus an essential component of our key business and may under no circumstances be misused just for marketing purposes."
Fischler agrees, stating: "Tourism can only be sustainable when its institutions are sustainable. It shouldn't really be that difficult to create appropriate quality criteria and to apply the subsequent advantages in marketing as well.'
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Basic Geocodes - 
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Geography
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0000
 Earth
0900
 Arctic Ocean
1000
 Europe
2000
 Africa
3000
 Atlantic Ocean
4000
 Antarctica
5000
 Americas
6000
 Pacific Ocean
7000
 Oceania
8000
 Asia
9000
 Indian Ocean

"Global Region-builder Geo-Code Prototype" ©