Community Motive 🌎🌍🌏Think Local Planet, Act Regionally!: "Sustainable Regions in the Mid-Atlantic" September 30 - October 1

7th Mid-Atlantic Regional Planning Roundtable

APA - Regional and Intergovernmental Planning Division

October 1, 2010 Wilmington will host the 7th Mid-Atlantic Regional Planning Roundtable “Sustainable Regions: States and Localities Working Regionally in the Mid-Atlantic.” The Honorable Thomas R. Carper, U.S. Senator, Delaware has been invited to give the keynote speech. On September 30, a Riverfront Walking Tour Workshop will be held, showcasing Wilmington as a Mid-Atlantic Regional Hub.

WILMAPCO is serving as the host agency, with co-sponsorship by the Regional and Intergovernmental Planning Division, American Planning Association and APA Chapters: Delaware, Maryland, National Capital Area, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia, as well as the Regional Studies Association and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. Historic roundtable support has been received from: AMPO, NADO and NARC.

The October 1 program includes, in addition to Senator Carper’s Keynote, panel topics include a Super Session: – Intermodal Regional Planning – The Roles of Rail, Aviation, Inter-city Bus in Sustainability for Localities, States and Regions; Visioning Sustainability –Integrating new values in planning; a HUD/DOT/EPA Regional Sustainability Program Discussion; State and Regional Planning – Developing Tools that Support the Practice and, in closing, a discussion: Might the Mid-Atlantic benefit from a Regional Research Network/Learning Network as exist in other parts of the world and in the U.S.?

The full agenda and registration information can be found at: http://www.wilmapco.org/mid-atlantic/ There is no registration fee and American Institute of Certified Planners certification credits are planned. Attendance is limited.

The first Mid-Atlantic Regional Planning Roundtable was held in 2005 in Middletown, Virginia, followed by events in Washington, D.C.; Baltimore, Maryland; Fredericksburg, Virginia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Frederick, Maryland. Attendance is open to Planners and Elected and Appointed Officials, Business Persons and Citizens.

For more information contact: Tom Christoffel, Chair, Mid-Atlantic Regional Planning Roundtable Steering Committee – 540-664-7037 (cell) or via email Tom.Christoffel@gmail.com

Please forward this notice to those who may be interested.

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!

"Sustainable Regions in the Mid-Atlantic" September 30 - October 1 - Wilmington, Delaware

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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

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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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Regional "Communites of Practice"

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