Community Motive 🌎🌍🌏Think Local Planet, Act Regionally!: Aug 3, 2010

Regional Communities Blog Readers –

Given the immediate nature of this webinar, this special post is being made. This program is one to watch. Not every application can be funded . I expect that many efforts will produce a vision that will require that the “regional community” proceed under its own steam. The necessity of cooperation will be evident to many. This will be on the agenda for the 7^th Mid-Atlantic Regional Planning Roundtable – October 1, Wilmington, Delaware. Send me an email if you want more information

"Regional" Tom

From: Carrie Kissel, National Association of Development Organizations

NADO, HUD and The Urban Institute are holding a webinar on HUD’s Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grants on Thursday afternoon—HUD is evidently getting several hundred questions a day about the required data and geography info for the application, so the webinar will walk the audience through the most common questions.

Discussing Data and Geography Needs for the HUD Sustainable Communities Regional Grant Program
Thursday, August 5,2010
Webinar

Three weeks remain to submit an application for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) new Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant program. The Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) requires applicants to establish regional consortia and provide information on a number of key data points to support the purpose and outcomes being sought through the grant proposal.

Join HUD, The Urban Institute, and the National Association of Development Organizations in a webinar designed to address common questions and guidance on providing the data required to tell your regional story.

Date: Thursday, August 5, 2010
Time: 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. EDT
To Register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/901443170

Speakers from HUD will discuss the data requirements of the NOFA, typical issues involving the geography of the regions applying, frequently asked questions, and recent additions to the resources available at the HUD Sustainability website. Representatives from NADO and Urban Institute will briefly discuss the opportunity that the NOFA represents to advance the use of data for regional planning and value of the regional partnerships that could emerge as a result of the application process.

For more information, please contact NADO staff at 202.624.7806.

Grant applications are due on August 23, 2010. For additional information on HUD’s Sustainable Communities Regional Grant Program, please visit www.hud.gov/sustainability. For more information about data and geography, view HUD's Frequently Asked Questions (PDF).

Carrie Kissel

National Association of Development Organizations

202.624.8829

www.NADO.org

www.RuralTransportation.org

www.Facebook.com/RPOAmerica

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!

Notice - Webinar Aug. 5, 1 pm EDT - Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant-questions-HUD-UI-NADO

"Community Motive" - What is it?

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

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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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