Community Motive 🌎🌍🌏Think Local Planet, Act Regionally!: May 28, 2011

Job growth is critical to the economic well-being of not only Anoka County, but the region as a whole.

That’s the view of Anoka County Board Chairperson Rhonda Sivarajah and the rest of the board, which is why the county board has decided to spend $75,000 to become part of the Itasca Project and its offshoot, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Regional Economic Development Partnership (REDP).

The Itasca Project, which focuses on a regional approach to economic development, formed the REDP “to be a value-added resource to all economic development organizations and activities in the region,” according to REDP website.

REDP is a private-public partnership (501C3), funded by business, institutions and government, whose mission is to stimulate economic growth and prosperity and a resultant higher quality of life for the Twin Cities metro area, the website states.

The county board discussed during a work session last year whether or not the county should participate in REDP and the decision was made to move forward, according to Sivarajah.

...

The Itasca Project efforts demonstrated a need for “one voice” and that one voice will be the Minneapolis-St. Paul Regional Economic Development Partnership (MSP-REDP), Sivarajah said.

...

According to its website, there are four specific activities that the MSP-REDP will lead or partner with existing organizations.

1. Set a strategic vision.

• Create the regional strategic vision for economic development.

• Define the tactical economic development agenda to guide resource prioritization.

2. Brand and market the region.

• Create a regional brand to reflect the strategic vision.

• Market the region’s vision and brand internally to align regional stakeholders.

• Market the region to external site consultants, companies and potential clients.

3. Retain current businesses in the region.

• Conduct local business check-ups and solve company specific problems.

• Connect businesses to, and raise awareness of, state and local resources.

4. Attract businesses to, and expand businesses in, the region.

• Serve as main contact for site consultants and relocating businesses.

• Provide one-stop shop for regional data, permit processes, real estate information, etc.

• Serve as project manager for local expansions and new attraction efforts.

• Connect companies with local resources and incentive programs.

http://abcnewspapers.com/2011/05/28/county-committed-to-regional-job-growth/

More Regional Communities bookmarks: http://www.delicious.com/I.see.regions.work

THE ALABAMA Gulf Coast Area Chamber of Commerce and the South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce won't be merging after all. A vote to combine the two fell short of the 75 percent requirement this week.

But though the results were disappointing, this doesn't mean that regionalism is dead among the chambers of commerce in south Baldwin County.

Far from it.
...

In the meantime, the chambers can continue to work together on issues when it is advantageous to do so. South Baldwin County leaders have already reaped the benefits of combining efforts in the wake of the oil spill.

The most visible evidence of such cooperation was the Coastal Resiliency Coalition and its "war room," where leaders from various communities came together to hash out the many problems stemming from the BP disaster.
...

Bookmark: http://blog.al.com/press-register-commentary/2011/05/regionalism_isnt_dead_just_del.html

More Regional Communities bookmarks at - http://www.delicious.com/I.see.regions.work

Note: This an experiment posting articles from delicious bookmarks which is also used to generate the Twitter feeds. Each item would be a post. Comments?

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!

"County committed to regional job growth | ABC Newspapers"

"Regionalism isn't dead, just delayed (editorial) | al.com"

"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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