Community Motive 🌎🌍🌏Think Local Planet, Act Regionally!: SPEAKER DEADLINE - February 14, 2010

Abstract Submission Deadline: February 14th

Regional Responses and Global Shifts:

Actors, Institutions and Organisations

24th-26th May, University of Pécs

Pécs, Southern Hungary

Monday 24th - Wednesday 26th May 2010 (walking tour Sunday 23rd May)

If you work on regional issues as an academic, or at the regional level as a policy maker or practitioner this conference is for you. The conference is open to all and relevant papers meeting the conference criteria will all be accepted.

CONFERENCE THEMES:

Innovative strategies and practices of firms in regional development
Labour markets and labour organisations with their continued relevance for regional studies
Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and Civil Society Organisations (CSO): Facilitators or regional development?
Regional Policies: Government and quasi-government initiatives
Reassessing EU Regional Policy
People in regions: Leadership, collective action and regional development
Financing regions: Global financial crisis and beyond?
Cooperation across borders
Global environmental change and the future of regional development
Theory and research in regional studies
Spatial planning in cities and regions
Experience economy and experience society: Culture, leisure and experience in spatial strategies
Creative regions in a creative economy
Regional policy and development in Southern, Central and Eastern Europe

CALL FOR PAPERS: Find the full call for papers and details of sub-themes here http://www.regional-studies-assoc.ac.uk/events/2010/may-pecs/cfp.pdf

KEY NOTE SPEAKERS: The key note address from Dirk Ahner, Director-General, European Commission, will open the conference giving insights to the 2010 Cohesion Report - prior to its formal publication. Attend for early results. Gerhard Stahl, Secretary General, Committee of the Regions will also give a presentation at this event.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?: Being held in the beautiful city of Pécs, Hungary, European Capital of Culture for the year 2010, this important event brings together established policy makers, practitioners from regions and all stages of academia from student to senior professor to address key policy issues affecting the lives of millions of the world’s citizens.

SESSIONS AND DISCUSSION GROUPS: The conference includes innovative session types including plenary sessions, roundtable discussion groups and conventional workshop sessions, along with opportunities to network with friends and colleagues during the refreshment breaks and evening functions and excursions.

PRICING POLICY: We offer territorial pricing - pay the fee for your area of the world. This opens access to all. Our bands are based on GDP on a price parity basis. Membership of the Association is priced in the same way - go here for more information on membership

Registration Information: http://www.regional-studies-assoc.ac.uk/events/2010/may-pecs-registration.asp

Speakers - must submit, register and pay by	14th February 2010
Early bird registration (lower fees) for all	until 7th March 2010
Late registrations for all	from 8th March 2010

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!

SPEAKER DEADLINE - February 14, 2010 - RSA Annual International Conference 2010

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"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

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Financial Crisis - New Necessity for Cooperation

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