Regional Community Development News – November 21, 2007 [regions_work]


A weekly compilation of news links about and for regional communities pursuing local and regional development.

Published on line since November 11, 2003.


1. Andrew Brod: Yes, regionalism is hard work - Greensboro News Record - Greensboro, NC, USA

Economic development is complicated. Take, for example, the concept of regionalism. Nearly everyone agrees that cities and counties are best situated to compete in the global economy when they collaborate to improve the region as a whole.

After all, city and county boundaries are arbitrary lines on a map, whereas a regional economy is an organic thing. It expands here and there, it creates and severs linkages, and it moves workers and products from place to place. It's misleading to talk about the Greensboro economy, because Greensboro is an integral part of a Triad economy.

And yet regional cooperation is tough. In the Triad, the three major cities of Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point often seem to be playing a game of tug-of-war as they test the limits of their usually cordial relationships. As many of us recall, regionalism was tossed out the window in 2004 (more energetically by some cities than by others) when the new Dell factory was the prize. And last year, High Point surprised even cynical observers when it granted incentives to La-Z-Boy to move its regional headquarters from Greensboro to a site just five miles away within the High Point city limits.

I recently attended a speech on regionalism by a nationally regarded economic-development consultant. He described regionalism's benefits and gave a few examples of how it had worked in various places. But then he noted that most of his examples came from regions anchored by a single major city. He said that regionalism is a tougher nut to crack in regions where no one city dominates. Unfortunately, that's a fair description of the Triad.

Don't get me wrong. Regionalism is far from dead in the Triad. The Heart of the Triad initiative is designed to ...

2. Atlanta in 2057: We face serious choices for future - Atlanta Journal Constitution - GA, USA

What kind of metro area do we want Atlanta to be 50 years from now, and what can we do to help turn that urban image into a reality?

The Atlanta Regional Commission has just launched a two-year effort to answer those questions by bringing in futurists and visionaries to help us design our future metropolis.

The first futurist — Glen Hiemstra of Futurist.com — spoke at last week's State of the Region breakfast, sharing his views of how metro Atlanta should look in 2057.

Hiemstra's vision was three-pronged.

First, metro Atlanta should become a "green leader."

Communities should become more sustainable by becoming more water- and energy-efficient. Investments should be made in high speed rail connecting cities throughout the Southeast and developing communities that can be served with transit.

"Set a goal to be as carbon-free as you can be, " Hiemstra told the 1, 000 leaders at the breakfast.

He called the second vision for metro Atlanta: "techtopia."

"Be a true innovation leader in life sciences, nanotechnology or the next generation of energy technologies, " Hiemstra said. Given the amount of sun in the South, he recommended concentrating on solar energy technologies as well as biofuels. The presence of Georgia Tech, Emory, Georgia State and the other research universities gives metro Atlanta an edge with those technologies.

The third vision was "lifelong, livable communities."

Hiemstra, using ARC's numbers, said the Atlanta region will have twice as many elderly (people older than 65) in 2025 as it does today given the aging baby boomers.

Because most of the elderly prefer staying in their current homes, Hiemstra said the challenge will be to reinvent the transportation system so that there are more options. It also will mean "making our communities much more compact" so that people can walk …

3. Richmond needs a vision - Richmond Times Dispatch, VA

The Richmond region needs an overarching vision for its future and the leaders to take it there, a consultant’s report commissioned by 40 business leaders says.

Consultant James A. Crupi presented the report today at a public meeting at VCU’s Siegel Center. The business leaders who paid him for his study hope it will spark community discussion and agreement on a path forward.

Crupi said:

  • Regional cooperation needs to be beefed up to deal with challenges ranging from transportation to development to workforce issues;
  • Schools, particularly the city of Richmond’s schools, need to be a focus of attention;
  • The concentration of poverty in the city is a major concern;
  • The area has made progress since his 1993, in relations between the races and its leaders’ understanding of the community’s needs;
  • The city of Richmond’s political leaders need to stop squabbling and start working together.

Crupi also proposed specific steps area leaders should take in the months head. They include:

  • A 2015 Metro Future Task force with a 12-month deadline to create a vision and plan for the region;
  • A Regional Transportation Authority funded with a 1 percent regional sales tax;
  • ...


4. Council nixes name change - ChronicleHerald.ca - Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Halifax Regional Municipality by any other name would not be as sweet, city hall councillors decided Tuesday night.

Council voted 13-8 to reject a proposal from Coun. Bob Harvey (Lower Sackville) to change the three-word moniker to simply Halifax.

Central to that for some councillors was the $852, 000 cost to change signage and decals on the city-owned vehicles and properties.

Mr. Harvey said that after 11½ years on regional council, he wanted the name of the municipality to catch up with common practice, which is to refer to the capital region simply as Halifax.

He invited his colleagues to "journey with me on the road of political maturity."

But many councillors said going down that road would divide the municipal entity that was formed with the amalgamation of the former cities of Halifax and Dartmouth, the town of Bedford and Halifax County in 1996.

Coun. Jim Smith (Albro Lake-Harbourview) said the public should be consulted.

"If I asked to change the name to Dartmouth, I’m sure people on this side of the harbour would be up in arms, " he pointed out at city hall.

"There’s no point in spending one cent on this."

A few councillors said that Halifax needed better "branding" around the world with a one-word identity, but that wasn’t the case for Coun. Gloria McCluskey (Dartmouth Centre), who told council she never says she’s from Halifax.

"This isn’t about branding. This is about bullying.

...

5. Regional survey shows wide support for mass transit - Houston Chronicle - United States

Suburban commuters from Galveston to Conroe, along with Houston and Harris County residents, overwhelmingly support mass transit as the best solution to traffic problems, according to a new regional survey released Thursday.

The findings represent a challenge to leaders of suburban counties where transit service is scarce, said Stephen Klineberg, the Rice University sociology professor who directed the survey.

In an expanded version of the 2007 Houston Area Survey, almost 80 percent of residents throughout the region named public transportation as their first or second choice among three options for easing traffic congestion. The other choices were building bigger and better roads or developing communities where people live close to where they work and shop.

Klineberg said the broad support for mass transit — particularly in Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, where concerns about traffic were the highest in the region — was striking in light of Houston's car-dependent history.

"Virtually all of Houston was built by, for and about the automobile, " said Klineberg, who presented his findings Thursday to the Center for Houston's Future, a nonprofit group focused on strategic regional planning.

His survey, conducted annually since 1982, has previously been limited to Harris County. After this year's findings were released in March, Klineberg expanded his sample to include Galveston, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties.

Leaders of suburban counties who attended Thursday's presentation said they were surprised by the level of support for public transportation in their communities.

"In our own surveys, mass transit per se is not on the radar, " said Montgomery County Judge Alan Sadler, noting that a park-and-ride lot west of Conroe closed recently because of lack of use.

"We're getting mixed messages, " Sadler said.

Klineberg acknowledged that support for transit as an abstract concept might not equate to a willingness to give up one's own automobile. ...

6. Every English region should be given London's powers - Guardian Unlimited – UK

... "If England's cities and counties enjoyed the powers of the Scottish parliament, as they did until the second half of the 20th century, they would offer Brown a home-grown answer to the 'West Lothian' conundrum. Scottish MPs would no longer be voting on England's health, education and social care policies because they would have been delegated to Cornwall, Yorkshire, Manchester and London."

... European local government works as part of a devolutionary model because most continental cities work with regional elected authorities. If Strasbourg or Cologne boast good transport and other infrastructure, these have often been achieved with additional backing and finance from the regional tier of government. Scotland and Wales now have a national but equivalent tier. Outside London, England lacks this important tool in planning and financing major projects. How do we begin to put this right?

Regionalists welcome the debate around governance prompted by Gordon Brown. The administrative element for change already exists in the eight current English regions. The creation of regional ministers and possibly regional select committees adds a further valuable focus - but only if regions are empowered to act rather than talk.

Lords reform offers a way forward. The election of second-chamber members by regional list systems with a dual mandate to sit as a regional council or executive board would answer the West Lothian question and give England powers akin to Scotland and Wales.

Jenkins' suggestion that the UK is on the road to disintegration is too pessimistic. Devolution presents opportunities to strengthen the union via a new constitutional settlement in which the English regions and UK nations are linked by a reformed Westminster parliament better reflecting British national and regional diversity.

7. New research critical, experts say - The Province - Vancouver, BC, Canada

Police are handcuffed in fighting gangs because they simply don't have enough information on the burgeoning number of criminal organizations, experts say.

There has been no comprehensive research done on gangs in B.C. in the past several years, even though academic experts acknowledge the gang landscape has changed dramatically since the 1990s -- the last time any research was undertaken.

"[In the 1980s and 1990s] there were more easily-identifiable, named groups and they were very much strutting their stuff in the manner of Hollywood movies, " said Robert Gordon, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University.

"But that's all collapsed. What has risen is a more amorphous set of groups which are focusing their activity in the illegal drug trade, " Gordon said yesterday.

Police now estimate there are more than 125 organized-crime groups in B.C.

Understanding the gang problem in terms of who is involved, what their numbers are, what activities they're involved in and why they joined is crucial to forming a comprehensive plan, experts say.

That was emphasized last week at the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police street-gang conference in Montreal. The CACP ended the conference by calling for a national strategy on street gangs that involves not just police enforcement but prevention and programs that enable members to leave gangs.

Meanwhile, Gordon is critical of Solicitor-General John Les for rejecting the idea of creating a regional police force, relying instead on cross-jurisdictional forces.

"Obviously, something is wrong with those integrated teams because they've been spectacularly unsuccessful in dealing with the illegal trade in drugs, which has been building in this province for a long time and which has been far from silent in dealing with their disputes, " said Gordon.

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan and even some police officers have said a regional force is needed. …

8. Giambra calls on Spitzer to create a regionalized City of Greater Buffalo - Buffalo News - NY, United States

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a modest proposal for you this evening. I propose that you ask Gov. [Eliot L.] Spitzer to make the Buffalo area a demonstration project for consolidation.”

Giambra cited the drive in the 1950s and 1960s for school district consolidation, noting, “With state focus and state leadership, consolidation happened, and we have an opportunity to make it happen again.”

He suggested that the state use the city and county fiscal control boards “as tools to achieve a firm new state policy on consolidation and government efficiency.”

Giambra pointed to the regional and metro governments in Ontario, where the economy is thriving, and to Ohio and Pennsylvania, where officials currently are wrestling with the consolidation question.

“We’ve seen it up close, ” he said. “We’ve seen it work. And we’ve seen economic progress occur right across the border. . . . Ontario did it, while we still talk about it.”

He ticked off the names of other cities that have seen success through consolidation — Louisville, Ky.; Augusta, Ga.; Jacksonville, Fla.

Giambra noted that Erie County, comprising 1, 000 square miles, has 1, 000 units of government and discourages growth because of high property taxes that feed duplicated government services.

“The solution is decisive state action on government consolidation and on land-use planning, ” he said. “Action is action. Inaction, unfortunately, is also action. I don’t think that we should be content with inaction.”

Giambra blamed inaction on “politicians who don’t want to give up what they’ve got” and state and local leaders who throw tax money at problems instead of making institutional changes.

9. Nick Bollman, adviser to high-level policymakers, drowns - San Francisco Chronicle - CA, USA

Nick Bollman, a Capitol insider who preached the notion of regionalism to solve problems such as traffic congestion, water supply and global warming, has died after drowning in the swimming pool of his home at Key West, Fla. He was 61.

Local authorities have ruled the Oct. 27 death as accidental drowning pending toxicology reports.

Mr. Bollman was the founder of the California Center for Regional Leadership, a nonprofit organization that seeks to help and advise policymakers at the highest levels of state government to tackle regional problems.

Last year, he left the group to become a senior fellow at the Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions at Florida Atlantic University.

Born and raised in Oregon, Mr. Bollman attended Harvard, where he graduated in 1967. He served four years in the U.S. Navy, followed by a stint in the office of then-New York City Mayor Abe Beame.

In 1987, he moved to California, where he worked as a program officer for the James Irvine Foundation and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

During that time, he created and managed Irvine foundation's sustainable communities program, which attracted grants totaling $38 million. Also during that period, he helped fund regional organizations such as the Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network.

In 2000, he founded the California Center for Regional Leadership, which is based in San Francisco, and became acquainted with lawmakers and the governor's office. He served as technical adviser to the California Economic Strategy Panel as well as for the California Workforce Investment Board and the Governor's Commission on Building for the 21st Century.

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took office in Sacramento in 2003, Mr. Bollman was enlisted to organize a series of meetings around the state for the governor's Cabinet members, local officials and civic leaders, …

10. U.S. regional communities - sub-State, State or multi-State - in news articles. Highlighted words are Google search terms. In this and the following section, links to websites of organizations are added to the news excerpt when this is the first time an organization has been found. A goal of this newsletter is to find every regional council in the U.S. in a news story. In most cases, where a full name is present a Google search will quickly get one to that organization.

.10 Baltimore going forward
Baltimore Sun - United States
Regionalism has been a talking point in business and political roundtables for decades. But that's just it: People only talked about it. ...

.11 Mass Transit Helps States' Green Rankings
Hartford Courant - United States
But the tri-state region is catching up. The three states are participating in a regional pact that sets carbon emission levels and a trading system for the ...

.12 Planner charges residents with planning for Starkille's future
The Commercial Dispatch - Columbus, MS, USA
"What's your biggest concern; that's what we need from you, " Rudy Johnson, a planner with the Golden Triangle Planning and Development District, ...

.13 WCU mission migrates closer to community
Asheville Citizen-Times - NC, USA
Globalization, internationalization, regionalization, the shift to a knowledge-based economy, increased social diversity and environmental degradation all ...

.14 Massachusetts makeover...
Boston Globe - United States
But the Metropolitan Area Planning Council's MetroFuture project has identified other threats that will emerge if present trends continue: strains on water ...

.15 Planning guru to talk intermodal
nwitimes-com - Munster, IN, USA

"To understand the relationship among the systems of the region, how its parts fit together, and how we can position Northwest Indiana in the global transportation and logistics marketplace is why we have invited Michael Gallis to Northwest Indiana, " Galbiati said.

.16 Governors Join in Creating Regional Pacts on Climate Change
New York Times - United States
Frustrated with the slow progress of legislation in Washington on energy and global warming, the nation's governors have created regional agreements to ...

.17 Council of governments to receive $220000
News Journal - Longview, TX, USA
The East Texas Council of Governments got about $30000 more from the state for its police training program than it received a year ago. ...

.18 Slow Growth Seen for Rural Regions
Houston Chronicle - United States
A survey of rural bankers in nine Midwestern and Plains states suggests the region will see slow economic growth in the coming months. ...

.19 Washington voted into regional commission
Rappahannock News - Washington, VA, USA
The Town of Washington on Oct. 24 gained membership to the Rappahannock-Rapidan Regional Commission, an association of counties and towns in the region that ...

.20 I-285 bridge symbolizes cooperation, growth
Atlanta Journal Constitution - GA, USA
The new bridge that's about to open over the northern portion of I-285 is anything but a typical road improvement. ... The Perimeter area is a major economic engine for the region and state. …

.21 Water Puzzle: Regional deals may help ease state's water woes
CNHI - Birmingham, AL, USA
Supporters of regionalization say combining water districts helps address the distribution problem, since merged districts can provide more water at less ...

.22 PUBLIC SCHOOL REGIONALIZATION.
Tapped - Washington, DC, USA
… Hartford mayor Eddie Perez, who argued for regionalization in the Courant yesterday: We should create a Hartford County School District that includes all 29 towns in the county. ...

.23 Perfect Storm For Regionalism
WKBW-TV - Buffalo, NY, USA
He wants a new Buffalo and Erie County with 1 school district and regionalized services. "The City boundaries would be expanded to incorporate the entire ...

.24 Bills gain 1st approval for Toronto game
Washington Business Journal - Washington, DC, USA
In their only statement on the request, the Bills said they "are looking to increase their successful regionalization efforts, " and, "in 2008, ...

.25 Consultants say focus on community service, not mega-hospital plan
BurlingtonFreePress.com - Burlington, VT, USA
"This is a quiet recommendation that we continue and complete a 25-year process in Vermont of a regionalized approach rather than relying on an institution ...

.26 USCG Rear Admiral Brooks hails Arctic zone challenges:
AlaskaReport - Juneau, AK, USA
While in Barrow, the Coast Guard crew also met with Oliver Levitt, chairman of the Arctic Slope Regional Council to briefly discuss long-term cooperation ...

.27 GHSA to realign regions in 2008
Northeast Georgian - Cornelia, GA, USA
... the GHSA's reclassification committee will meet to place all member schools in regions. Once the regions are set, schools have until Dec. 14 to file a written appeal to be placed in a different region. ...

11. Other in the news: Highlighted words are Google search terms.

.10 Trust elusive in regional community
Nation Multimedia - Bangkok, Thailand
... continue to negate the potential emergence of a fully-fledged "community". To build more trust in the region both policy-makers and the media need to ...

.11 Northeast Asia rising
Honolulu Star-Bulletin - Honolulu, HI, USA
... To enhance the overall economic development of NEA requires further integration of regional transportation systems and added cooperation. ...

.12 Prince Edward County may serve as model for other regions
Belleville Intelligencer - Belleville, Ontario, Canada
Prince Edward County could well serve as the model for regions of the province planning to establish a brand, according to Ontario's tourism ...

.13 10 destinations for 2008 to be announced at WTM
Boarding-no - Stavanger, Rogaland, Norway
The response to our regional-level honours scheme has been phenomenal, and we have undoubtedly generated a lot more excitement and interest. ...

.14 Barents Cooperation - an EU priority
Barents Observer - Archangel, Russia

The Barents Council today highlighted the need to make the Barents Region a priority area in the EU’s Northern Dimension.

.15 Regional councils join to create information management system
m-net - Wellington, New Zealand
The grouping, called the Regional Council Collaborative Development Group (RCCDG), has been formed to procure the software after a two-year search for ...

.16 East Africa: Countries Close to Marketing Region's Tourism As Bloc
AllAfrica.com - Washington, USA
Tourism chiefs and players in the East African Community (EAC) are moving closer to marketing the region's tourism as a single bloc. ...

.17 GDP 'outdated' as indicator of wellbeing
EurActiv - Brussels, Belgium
... for economic performance, social cohesion and environmental sustainability, " said Rui Baleiras, State Secretary for Regional Development, Portugal. ...

.18 PartSource Ramps-up Regional Warehousing
Auto Service World - Toronto, Canada
"Each hub will be able to warehouse regionally catered products to best serve that market, " he says. "We'll be able to conduct some regionally based ...

.19 Government of Aragon Region (Spain) in EUR 3 Million Agreement
CNNMoney.com - USA
The government of Aragon region today signed an agreement worth a total of EUR 3 million with IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Ibermática for the technology upgrade of ...

.20 Council develpment record shattered
Tamworth Northern Daily Leader - Tamworth, New South Wales, Australia
Mr Inglis said while the growth was being tracked by TRC analysts û the council was also building on a regional development "roadmap" for the next 20 years ...

.21 A View from the City: Growth and Challenges
By Sherry Linkon(Sherry Linkon)
Another key issue in economic development is regionalization, and that presents challenges related to race. If we want to create more regional networks, of any kind, we will have to face up to the realities of segregation and racism. ...

.22 Building nations in our region
The Australian - Sydney, Australia
But there is also no escaping the reality that both these countries - and others in our immediate region - remain very unstable. ...

.23 World Population Highlights 2007: Migration
Population Reference Bureau – Washington, D.C.

Between 1995 and 2000, around 206 million migrants per year moved from less developed to more developed regions. More than one-half of these settled in the United States and Canada. This article is excerpted from the Population ...

.24 SERVIR: From Space to Village. A Regional Monitoring and Visualization System For Environmental Management Using Satellite Applications For Sustainable Development
NASA - Huntsville, AL

The focus of these efforts has primarily been to measure the impact of human development on the environment and to provide data for the management of human settlement and expansion in the region....

12. Blogs: Highlighted words are Google search terms.

.10 Celebrate 40 years of Regionalism
By George Jackson
Demand Regionalism! Find out who your regional organization is. Is it a Council of Governments? Is it a Metropolitan Planning Organization? Is it both? And particpate in the regional community. Cities and counties, towns and townships ...

.11 ARC wants your ideas for metro Atlanta's future
By ACE
The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) has been around for 60 years, yet we still have some of the worse traffic, air quality, and water shortage problems of any 5 million person area in the country. Hopefully, we'll do a better job ...

.12 Mandating regional cooperation
By SamH
The obstacles to regional cooperation include a distrust of regional initiatives, a desire for local autonomy and a focus on the tangible (if short-run) benefits of going it alone. As long as communities have their own tax bases, ...

.13 UN Studies Sustainable "Religious Tourism"
By Larry Portzline(Larry Portzline)
The conference brought together representatives of tourism, cultural, and economic development administrations, as well as religious authorities, local and regional destination management organizations, the private sector, NGOs involved ...

.14 Regional unity is vital to area's redevelopment
By QLC
Tim Sanders is executive director of the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority. The opinion expressed in this column is the writer's and not necessarily that of The Times.

.15 Foreclosing the region
By Bill Callahan
There's one front-page issue on which the immediate self-interests of cities throughout Cuyahoga County ... the issue is subprime mortgage foreclosures. ... So why isn’t the foreclosure crisis high on the “regional agenda”…

.16 Richmond's Future: Crupi's Coming a-callin'

18 Nov 2007 by John Sarvay

(Crupi, 1992). And that's exactly where Richmond remains, though I have little doubt that Crupi will observe at least a bit of progress when he reports out tomorrow. The First Conversation The region's power class -- corporate leaders, ...

.17 Regionalism's Batting Averages
By Jon Baliles(Jon Baliles)
The Richmond Regional Planning District Commission is an idea I noted this summer was past its time. Way past. It is time to come up with a new regional body with new blood and new ideas. The current incarnation is not getting much done ...

.18 When is a region not a region?
By SIMON WOODS
Yet the Australians, or at least those in charge of the wine industry, seem hell-bent on pursuing regionality, even though most of the wines are marked more by winemaking than region. Further proof of this was provided by a tasting of ...

.19 [eu monster] common purpose strikes back
By Randy Higham(Randy Higham)
Who defines a region? Well it isn’t us. HMG in its White Paper ‘Your Region Your Choice’ says ‘that it is not necessary for a region to have a strong historic identity to create a modern one, ’...

.20 Core Cities
By Matt Dean(Matt Dean)
As well as expecting authorities to work together at a sub-regional level, she also sees an extended role for Regional Development Agencies with their key role again being to facilitate economic growth. She stressed that greater ...

.21 Today's Notes
By Chris
I recently read a fascinating history of the design moves behind the Tennessee Valley Authority--the most massive regional development effort in American history, by the way--and wrote a review that may be of interest. ...

.22 Not on your doorstep - selling into 'other regions'
By Rob(Rob)
I only touched lightly on the 'other regions', the reason being that although I have worked extensively in Europe, there are many people more experienced in each country and separate region. The only country I have only ever lived in ...

.23 A sort of letter to Joel Giambra before he leaves office
By Christopher Byrd
Part of what you spoke about was calling on Governor Spitzer to take on a bold initiative you are proposing to create a regionalized City of Greater Buffalo. I am guessing that this is some form of legacy fixing on your part. ...

.24 New Paper ... Framing Climate: Implications for Local Government Policy
By Gareth Johnston
... some of the reasons behind non implementation of State based strategies come from a dearth of regional / local climate models and detailed mapping as well as a lack of Federal direction; ...

.25 Are we neanderthals? How can social software help?
By sammy
University departments are trapped inside their disciplines and find cross disciplinary work very challenging. Yet we know that the breakout in human potential came as a result of using complex language to look across boundaries. ...

.26 Targeting Your Press Release With Google Trends
By Stephen Peron
The next time you get to the MSA field when submitting your press release and it sayss "Your release is currently targeting All Regions/International and the following Cities / MSAs:" take your top keyword or keyword term and use Google ...

.27 Word of Mouth Website
By Jethro(jean)
It is total regionally focused, (in fact has a South and North Brisbane site.) with over 300 categories for people to comment on. You can check it out at www.womf.com. We are looking for local well connected bloggers to start some viral

.28 Toyota Launches Three-Year Study of Prius Plug-In With UC Research
By http-//www-autosavant-net
UC Irvine will concentrate on technical issues, such as how much electricity will be taken from the regional power grid as thousands of hybrid owners plug in."Using real-world settings, we will begin to answer some of these open ...

.29 Regional Arts Policy: Labor's funding to stimulate the arts in regional Australia
By Jim McDonald
This will greatly benefit the hosting community. While it is apparently only perceived as a single campus institution, Labor should consider it a priority to locate such an Centre in a region as the stimuli for the arts are already ...

.30 where did all the regional directors go? in STC : STC Governance
The Society's Board of Directors is now elected directly by the whole membership (or it will be very shortly, when the terms of office of the last regionally elected Directors expire). This issue was discussed at great length in various ...

.31 Globalization? Now it's Regionalization.
By Stanislav(Stanislav)
There are two other trends that are equally putting pressure for regionalization. The first of these mega, world trends, is the obvious price increase in oil and thus fuel oil used for sea bound transportation. As prices increase in the ...

.32 New NetLibrary eBook Regional Collection Now Available
By Steve Sanzo
Benefits of the New Regional Collection Model Include: • Greater depth and breadth of content accessible • Increased simultaneous accesses • New pricing model that includes early participation discounts • All content is frontlist ...

.33 All Global Warming is Local - The Politics and Science of Regional Climate Impacts

By Chris Mooney
...the projected regional warming and consequent increase in wildfire activity in the western United States is likely to magnify the threats to human communities and ecosystems, and substantially increase the management challenges in ...

.34 Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Conference on Central Asia and Europe: A New Economic Partnership for the 21st Century Berlin
By ismailimail
It is appropriate that the word "Regional" is at the center of our deliberations on Central Asia. The countries are diverse in many ways — and the development approaches there must be sensitive to divergent requirements. ...

13. Google News for “Regional Community”

Other menu sections available from this link include: regions, regional, regional community, region, Regional Council, regional development and other search terms. They can be sorted by date or relevance. These are among the 50 search terms I use to produce this newsletter.

My name is Tom Christoffel. I've worked in the field of intergovernmental cooperation since 1973. As a consequence, "I see regions work." Regional Community Development News is published weekly based on news reports as of Wednesday.

Making visible analysis and actions at multi-jurisdictional regional scales is its purpose. "Think globally, act locally" was innovative in its time. Today the local scale is often too small to address today's needs and opportunities. "Think local planet, act regionally, " is my candidate paradigm. (No one said we're only allowed one paradigm.)

We can see that “regional communities” are organized locally and now act both to avoid tragedy in the commons and gain benefits. An effective multi-jurisdictional regional community has DNA: it is geographically Defined; has a common Name and its Alignment is inclusive of smaller communities and participatory in larger communities. So, by scanning this compilation, reading articles and checking organizations - you too will be able to see the regional communities that already exist.

News references are found using the Google News search service. Media article links are “fair use” to transform globally scattered reports to make regional approaches visible. Links go to the publisher and do not compete with it. Such publishers are likely to have related stories and thus be seen by new customers. “Regional” is an emerging news category. There is no charge for this service and no profit is made from its use, though any user can become more aware of the topic itself.

To read and search previous issues go to: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/regions_work/

The term “Development” was added to the name in January, 2006.

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Questions, comments or items to feature in Regional Community Development News?

Please e-mail the editor: Tom.Christoffel@comcast.net or Tom.Christoffel@gmail.com

Thomas J. (Tom) Christoffel, AICP Making regions visible for Leaders and Problem-solvers. www.regionalintelligence.com or www.regions.ws