Community Motive 🌎🌍🌏Think Local Planet, Act Regionally!: Aug 11, 2009

Draft Agenda and Save the Date Notice

Final details are being worked out for the 6^th Mid-Atlantic Regional Planning Roundtable program in Frederick, MD, but the dates and location are final.

As in the past, there is no registration fee for the event which will also offer AICP Certification credits. This is due to the sponsorship by the APA Regional and Intergovernmental Division, APA Chapters and the host region, in this case the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG).

The main event is October 1, beginning at 9:30 a.m. in Frederick, Maryland, the county seat of Frederick County, Maryland. Both local governments are members of COG. The working agenda follows below. People may register for either or both days as may fit your schedule.

Working Agenda - 6^th Mid-Atlantic Regional Planning Roundtable

Smart and Sustainable – Local & Regional, State and Multi-State -

How will planning contribute to achieving these goals of the citizenry?

Wednesday, September 30 - Late afternoon and Evening

Frederick, Maryland: Mid-Atlantic Regional Hub - Downtown Walking Tour Workshop

Frederick is a regional hub in the Mid-Atlantic and a living example of the benefits of planning coordination at the city, county, regional, state and multi-state levels. This history and the current results will be shared in a Downtown Walking Tour Workshop beginning at 4:15 p.m. AICP certification - one credit. At 6 p.m. there will be a Dutch treat dinner at Patrick's Irish Pub and Restaurant followed by speakers explaining the City-County relationships and agreements that are models for smart growth and sustainability in a network of wider regions.

Thursday, October 1 – Morning and Afternoon

Smart and Sustainable – Local & Regional, State and Multi-State -

How will planning contribute to achieving these goals of the citizenry?

9:30-10: 000 a.m. Welcome and Introductions

Welcome by Frederick officials and Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments

Introduction of the Program. by Bob Leiter, Chair, Regional and Intergovernmental Planning Division

10:00-11:15 - Panel 1 – Metropolitan Council and State Perspectives – Smart and Sustainable

- Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments

- Baltimore Metropolitan Council

- Maryland Department of Planning

11:15 to 12:30 - Panel 2 - Metropolitan Fringe – Rural and Small Metro Regions and Counties – Smart, Sustainable and Metro Impacts

- Adams County, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

- Tri County Council for Western Maryland – Frostburg, Maryland

- Northern Shenandoah Regional Valley Commission – Front Royal, Virginia

12:30 to 2:15 p.m. Lunch followed by

Panel 3 - Smart and Sustainable – Local and Regional from Academic and Federal Perspectives.

Moderator: Alan Imhoff, Frederick City Alderman

Gerrit Knapp, Director of the Smart Growth Center at the University of Maryland

John Frece, Director of the Office of Smart Growth, EPA

The Panelists will give an overview of the needs, issues and opportunities from their individual perspectives. This will be followed by questions from the Moderator and then a broader Q &A session including the audience.

2:00 – 2:15 - Networking Break

2:15 to 3:00 - Panel 4 – Smart and Sustainable – Regional, Inter-regional and Intergovernmental Planning Integration – How might we improve what is already being done?

Bruce McDowell, FAICP - History, Practice and a Future Vision

Moderator led discussion.

3:00 to 3:30 – Panel 5 - Next steps discussion, follow-up topic meetings, and seeking a volunteer Council host and location for Roundtable #7 .

3:35 Adjourn

If you want to register now, go to: http://www.mwcog.org/calendar/ Scroll to the dates – September 30/October 1 and open the link. The form gives the option to register either or both days. You may change your choices in the future.

Information and presentations from the prior events are at: http://semanticommunity.wik.is/Mid-Atlantic_Regional_Planning_Roundtables

Regional and Intergovernmental Planning Division contacts (Please send any feedback to both): Tom.Christoffel@gmail.com & Leeschoenecker@aol.com

Phone – Tom: 540-635-8582 Lee: 202-686-8864

Metropolitan Washington COG contact: Paul DesJardin pdesjardin@mwcog.org

Phone: 202-962-3293

Mid-Atlantic Planning Roundtable Steering Committee

Prototype for Global Coding of Political Geographies Library and Data Management – Wikipedia Example

The system is based on a geocode scheme set up for earth that focuses on established political boundaries as a basis for regional grouping of nations, states and localities. It is decimal system based to take advantage of the sort criteria for numbers in computers. It utilized the Sector Group and Region codes of the United Nations and ISO. Geographic information system technology does not solve the problem, but its tools can be used with the geocodes.

The geocode system effectively organizes Wikipedia entries as a library management and the geocodes can be used for data aggregation. This has been developed under a Creative Commons license and would benefit from a global network implementation where local users cooperatively related subnational geographic regions and component political geography.

Examples are at the links which follow:

1. Global Geocode Library Use Organizes Wikipedia Pages Geographically

2. Global Geocode Library Use Organizes U.S. State Wikipedia Pages Geographically

3. Global Geocode Library Organizes U.S. Sub-state and Multi-state Region Wikipedia Pages Geographically

4. Why focus on COGs/Regional Councils in the U.S.? "the substate district is essentially an administrative tool of states"

Contact: Tom Christoffel

Community Motive – Three Thoughts by Tom Christoffel, FeRSA, 3/16/09-revised 9/29/09; 9/26/11

Based on my experience as a regional planner and agency director, 1973 -2008, and in recognition of emerging "regional communities," I developed three thoughts about community that relate to the challenge of working across-boundaries as greater or regional communities. The thoughts/theses apply for communities at the scale of bonding or bridging social capital as defined by Robert D. Putnam, which is alternately local or regional. (link below)

As of 2011, considering the global financial crisis brought about by pursuit of the "profit motive," it struck me that this has come to dominate modern life. This is a relatively new invention of civilization and wasn't a concern for most of the time that homo sapiens has been on the planet.

The three thoughts below that had emerged in my experience of working on regional cooperation now represent what I now posit as the "community motive." Concern about "profit" can emerge within an established community over time, but, to my mind the "profit motive" does not exist in the wild.

1) Community precedes cooperation.
2) Community is how life solves all problems.
3) Security is the primary purpose of community.

These three thoughts, theses if you will, are the basis of the "community motive." Following is some exposition about each one.

As I see it, security has always been the priority for humans since the plains of Africa. That's why communities first seek to establish defensible boundaries. After the basics are in place, security focus shifts to the social and economic. Boundaries work like the membrane in the osmosis experiment most of us have seen in a science class. The membrane is a filter that lets the good things pass through, but keeps unwanted things out. (Osmosis -YouTube - 45 sec.)

The evolved political boundaries of today have consequence. The rules change when you cross them. Though marked on the ground and fortified in some instances, they are conceptual, as pictured above, with Universe Man. The boundary divides the space between local, that within, and regional, everything outside, as labeled in the second panel. The third panel repeats the image within, to show, without graphic elegance, that the land on which Universe Man sits is regional at another scale, as determined by other boundaries, and another area that's local. A territory is both local and regional, depending upon the perspective.

Communities of communities, “regional communities” are greater communities organized to solve a problem, be it managing a watershed, strengthening an economic cluster or ensuring peer competition for school sports. Regional boundaries can be imposed for administrative purposes within states, but for these to be a basis for effective cooperation, a greater community sense is needed for that geography among the people. This is true for multi-state and multi-national regional communities as well. The leaders with such a vision can build a regional community by finding that which is already in place.

This is not to suggest that community is easy to build in order to solve problems. In a crisis, humans of any culture, belief or politics can quickly come together and self-organize to save themselves and others. It was the on-the- ground response to the 9/11 attacks that demonstrated to me the deep responsiveness of human community, as well as the fundamental importance of security. Community is how humans have always survived. This, I think, extends to all life forms.

The "community motive" comes into play when there is a problem to be solved. In a monetized civilization, the "profit motive" may be an incentive for some action, but most of the problems of life don't have a check at the end for their solution. They are things that must be done. Because this is the case, humanity has been able to perpetuate. ©

For more on Regional Community and Scale, see the Slideshare box below.

To learn about bridging and bonding social capital, read Chapter 1 of Bowling Alone: the collapse and revival of American community By Robert D. Putnam

Community Motive 🌎🌍🌏Think Local Planet, Act Regionally!

6th Mid-Atlantic Regional Planning Roundtable - Frederick, MD - Sept. 30 & Oct. 1, 2009

"Community Motive" - What is it?

Prototype for Global Coding of Political Geographies Library and Data Management – Wikipedia Example

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Earth ( we know its a spherical whole)

Universe Man at the Boundary

Local Planet - Regional Space

Our Local Planet has systems of Political Geographies which combine as Regional/Greater Communities

Community Motive – Three Thoughts by Tom Christoffel, FeRSA, 3/16/09-revised 9/29/09; 9/26/11

Regional Community News

Financial Crisis - New Necessity for Cooperation

Slideshare - PowerPoints and PDFs

Regional "Communites of Practice"

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