Regional/Greater Community Development News – August 27, 2012


    Multi-jurisdictional intentional regional communities are, in all cases, “Greater Communities” where “community motive” is at work at a more than a local scale. This newsletter provides a scan of regional community, cooperation and collaboration activity as reported in news media and blogs.
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Top 10 Stories
Governor Cuomo presided Tuesday over a day long presentation by the state's ten regional economic development councils.
The councils are pitching their ideas for another $750 million dollars in grants.
This is round two for the Regional Economic Development Councils, who have already received over three quarters of a billion dollars for projects ranging from cancer research and biotech to tourism boosters and downtown revitalization.
Governor Cuomo spoke before leaders from the ten regions, ranging from Buffalo to Long Island, presented ideas for more spending projects. The governor says he’s trying to make up for years of neglect in New York, that he says helped lead to the once Empire State’s economic decline. Cuomo says governors of competing states acted as though they were “the head of the Chambers of Commerce”, while New York politicians sat back and waited for businesses to come. The governor says, as a result, the state fell behind. …
If the Regional Economic Development Council structure implemented by Gov. Andrew Cuomo has had an impact on the area, the main one has been to nurture a regional identity for the North Country.
… Cuomo told North Country Regional Economic Development Council co-chairs Tony Collins and Garry Douglas that they have done extraordinarily well in creating a North Country identity despite more challenges than other areas of the state.
"It's especially hard in the North Country, because there you have more identification for the locality," said Cuomo, who regularly vacations in Lake Placid and Saranac Lake. "Even the roads in the North Country are not conducive to connectivity."
Despite those challenges, Cuomo said he feels a real sense of pride in the North Country now, and a regional feel that didn't used to exist. He said a region needs to buy in to a plan if it's going to be successful in springing back up from economic depression, and that's what's happening in the North Country.
The mood was somber at Wednesday’s board meeting of the Atlanta Regional Commission.
Three weeks earlier, the 10-county region resoundingly defeated a regional transportation sales tax that the ARC had worked on for the better part of two years.
And on Tuesday night, two of its county commission chairs lost their run-off elections — possibly in part to their support of the transportation sales tax referendum.
… ARC Chairman … Leithead
Citizen member … Waters…had never seen the leaders of the region more unified than they were last year when they approved the $6.14 billion list of transportation projects.
 …
For some, the bottom line was that “all politics are local” — and that the region’s parts might be greater than its whole, according to … Burnette, a citizen member from Cherokee County. “We’ve just got to keep it locally relevant,” he said.
 Leithead…acknowledged the price that some elected leaders have paid when they’ve become more regional in their thinking.
“The history of this organization is that with elected members, the more they participated regionally, the more liability it created for them locally… Something about this referendum created something of a setback.”
“That is our mandate — continuing to be a regional voice ,” Leithead said.
I am a city planner and a native Atlantan. Like any effective planner, I’m an optimist by nature, seeking potential in every situation. It’s in my genes to convert community goals and expectations into action plans.
Like all native Atlantans, I was trained to promote what we want people to believe we are.
So, after the decisive failure of the Transportation Improvement Act (TIA)… many of us planners were genuinely surprised at how quickly the sentiments like the rising Phoenix and the “We are the heart of the South” have faded in the public discourse.
The transportation crisis we face is still here and is very serious. The TIA voting results were so dramatic that our region has actually stopped in mid-stride to wonder who “we” really are and what went wrong. I wonder what we do next.…
My biggest take-away is that whatever is next must be profoundly different. As a planner, I believe we need to broaden our characterization of costs and benefits. Here are a few myths and tips to keep our conversation on track:
1) “Only 3 percent of people take transit so it’s not worth the money.”
Reality: The majority of the population does not live near transit. In the City of Atlanta, where frequent train and bus routes exist ridership is 30+ percent. Using diluted percentages to justify the rejection of transit is a dangerous business case for the future of our region and state. Every successful city in the future is building a choice of roads and transit, and they are not mutually exclusive.
2) “We will save x amount of fuel and time with x road project.”
Reality: …
3) “Hey you planner, the car is king.”
Reality: …
4) “The Atlanta BeltLine is not a regional project and is only about economic development.”
Reality: …
5) “My county needs roads not transit.”
Reality: …
As three of Boulder County's representatives to…agencies, including DRCOG (Denver Regional Council of Governments), RTD (Regional Transportation District), and the US36 MCC (Mayors and Commissioners Coalition), that help guide transportation policy decisions in the Denver region…appealing to join the tempest of indignation around the current state of the FasTracks program. A combination of national economic head-winds and some major planning miscalculations in the run-up to the original 2004 FasTracks vote are dealing a particularly rough blow to promised transit investments for our area. …
For the immediate term, we joined with our other US 36 colleagues to prioritize full build out of bus-rapid-transit (BRT) system. Why the focus on BRT? With an estimated daily ridership of 20,400 by 2035, the US 36 BRT system has long been recognized as the transit workhorse for Boulder/Denver commuters.
…we are focused on aggressively pursuing the most practical route toward achieving the vision of regional transit mobility that the 2004 FasTracks plan embodied. We hope you will join us in that fight.
...
“The purpose of this project is to serve as a pilot study for place branding the Greater Stillwater region,” said Dr. Karen Gulliver, MBA program chair at Argosy University in Eagan.
“Place branding is a special application of product branding where brand principles are applied to a country or region. Tourism isn’t the only reason for place branding. Often, the brand is crafted around the desire to attract outside investment or to stimulate exports from the area just as much as to bring visitors into the area.”
The studies follow the lead from last year’s Community Symposium, which identified six categories of economic development opportunities, including downtown revitalization.
“We’re delighted Argosy University has chosen the greater Stillwater area to conduct a series of economic studies that will surely benefit the entire region,” said Todd Streeter, chamber executive director.
...
Virginia's budget surplus touted by Gov. Bob McDonnell comes at a cost to already strapped cities and counties, claims an association for local governments.
McDonnell last week reported a surplus of $448.5 million for fiscal 2012 -- an amount including $192.2 million in extra, unexpected revenue and $319.3 million in savings from unspent general fund appropriations, higher education and other areas. This marked the third year in a row the state reported a surplus, with the three-year total nearing $1.4 billion.
Approximately $60 million of the surplus came from localities remitted as "local aid to the state," according to data from the Virginia Municipal League. The VML noted the budget revenue surplus falls short of the $310.7 million in fiscal 2011 and $220 million the previous period.
None of the surplus has been directly allocated to local governments.
Localities in the Northern Shenandoah Valley have paid their shares for "aid to the commonwealth." Shenandoah County in fiscal 2012 remitted $231,891; Warren County, $324,881; and Frederick County $293,812, according to information provided by each locality. Frederick County already has remitted $252,850 for fiscal 2013.
Frederick County Board of Supervisors in February adopted a resolution calling for an end to "local aid to the state." Warren County supervisors passed a similar resolution a year ago, which noted that localities will have given the state approximately $220 million by the close of fiscal 2012 on June 30. The Warren County resolutions also states the restriction shifts the costs to local taxpayers and "artificially increases the amount of state surplus revenue."
THE federal government has grouped the whole of Australia into eight regional areas to assess the likely impact of rising global temperatures on every kind of terrain, from expensive coastal residential areas to the rangelands of central Australia and the monsoonal north, reports The Australian Financial Review.
It has allocated $8 million in funding to entice research institutions to work with planners in National Resource Management (NRM) organisations to assess climate change impacts, potential adaptation responses and guidance on how to apply all this in regional planning.
The eight clusters come from grouping Australia's 56 NRM regions. There should be one project per cluster, and perhaps one or two national projects to stitch the results together.
The researchers will be looking at possible changes in water availability, vegetation composition, biodiversity, carbon storage in the landscape and rises in local sea levels. ...
From a 'big country town' to the second-fastest-growing region in Australia: how big is too big for Brisbane?
According to estimates used to draft the latest South East Queensland Regional Plan, substantial growth is expected to see the greater region grow to house 4.4 million people by 2031.
In the plan, due for review in 2014, that population is spread over 11 regional and city councils including the Gold and Sunshine coasts, and requires 754,000 additional homes…
The latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows the population of the Greater Brisbane Region (which excludes the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast) was 2.15 million people at July 2011, a figure nearly half the state's population of 4.47 million people.
We put the following question to various stakeholders in the future of Brisbane. Their responses are below. Q: What is the ideal population for the greater Brisbane region and why do you think that number is the right size? …
...
Our collective passage through and reorganization after the release phase of this pivotal adaptive cycle can be thought of as an evolutionary event. And, as noted above, evolution is driven by cooperation as much as by competition. Indeed, cooperation is the source of most of our species’ extraordinary accomplishments so far. Language—which gives us the ability to coordinate our behavior across space and time—has made us by far the most successful large animal species on the planet. Our societal evolution from hunting-and-gathering bands to agrarian civilizations to industrial globalism required ever-higher levels of cooperative behavior: as one small example, think for a moment about the stunningly rich collaborative action required to build and inhabit a skyscraper. As we adapt and evolve further in the decades and centuries ahead, we will do so by finding even more effective ways to cooperate.
Ironically, however, during the past few millennia, and especially during the most recent century, social complexity has permitted greater concentrations of wealth, thus more economic inequality, and hence (at least potentially) more competition for control over heaps of agglomerated wealth. ...

Extra
The Miller Center has released a new report proposing practical, actionable ways to sell the American public on the need to invest in the nation’s transportation infrastructure. With the nation’s roads in disrepair, projects for the future sidelined, the Highway Trust Fund needing chronic bail-outs, and Congress unable to agree on a solution, the report aims to raise public awareness about an issue that greatly affects the U.S. economy.
“There is a lack of confidence and trust in the ability of policymakers to make good decisions in transportation policy and planning. And without a mandate from a broader public, most policymakers don’t want to risk reforming the current system in a political landscape fraught with many other challenges and competing demands,” said former Transportation Secretaries Norman Mineta and Samuel Skinner, co-chairs of the Miller Center’s David R. Goode National Transportation Policy Conference on which the report is based.
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Regional/Greater Community Development News – August 20, 2012


    Multi-jurisdictional intentional regional communities are, in all cases, “Greater Communities” where “community motive” is at work at a more than a local scale. This newsletter provides a scan of regional community, cooperation and collaboration activity as reported in news media and blogs.
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Top 10 Stories
The Malloy administration Friday announced $8.6 million in grants to promote regional planning and economic development.
"These grants are an investment in less expensive government — government absolutely must do more with less," Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said in a written statement. "Using improved technology to reduce costs and taking a collaborative approach to providing local services meets the needs of residents in a smarter way."
More than $7 million of the money went to regional councils and planning agencies for Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) , or standardized mapping, systems to better coordinate disaster response..
In addition are the following grants, listed by amount, who gets it, and why: …
The regional grant initiative, under the Regional Performance Incentive Program, is administered by the state Office of Policy and Management. ...
…anyone who sees the Atlanta vote as an indication that Americans won't pay for transportation should take a look beyond the state's capital city. Lost in much of the analysis about the failure of the tax hike in Atlanta -- and most of the state's other 12 transportation districts too -- was the fact that it actually passed in three of them.
In Region 7 -- anchored by the city of Augusta and Richmond County -- Mayor Deke Copenhaver says officials who assembled the project list stuck to mostly nuts-and-bolts work like road resurfacing and widening. "(W)e didn't go with any of the major, sexy projects that would be a lightening rod for controversy."
Regional officials say a key reason the vote was successful in the three regions was because the lists were kept relatively short. "'I think people got their hands around it," says Teresa Tomlinson, mayor of Columbus, which is a merged city with Muscogee County.
In Columbus' Region 8, there were only about two dozen projects, which some proponents say was manageable and could be easily conveyed to voters, unlike the list assembled for greater Atlanta.
3. A recent "territorial review" published by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development assessing the Chicago tri-state metropolitan area was the impetus for the July 17 conference "Milwaukee's Future in the Chicago Megacity."
Milwaukee Water Council and its members are working with the Tri-State Alliance for Regional Development to create an integrated aquaponics ecosystem  that would involve raising fish and growing vegetables year-round in enclosed buildings.
It is also participating in an application for the Economic Development Administration's 2012 i6 Challenge with the Chicago-based Clean Energy Trust. …
One idea of regional collaboration is clusters in the region playing the role of broker between the tri-state region universities, companies and governments, not just for commercialization but for innovation and entrepreneurship, to achieve greater regionwide effectiveness and to maximize the potential for national and international market penetration.
The Water Council's work is an on-the-ground example of how well this approach can work.…
This collaboration between different parts of the tri-state area is the driving force behind its economic development and viability on a global stage. At the Water Council, we know that we compete on the global stage with three other global players: Singapore, the Netherlands and Israel. The only way we can be globally competitive is to work with our regional neighbors to commercialize our research and ideas and to market to the world.
The time has come for our regions to put aside our differences and, through our clusters, come together to form a globally competitive tri-state region.
SAVANNAH’S MAYOR and council have it exactly right when it comes to pollution in the Ogeechee River. What happens upstream affects things downstream.
Since Savannah and Chatham County are about 70 miles downriver from the King America Finishing plant implicated in last summer’s massive fish kill, it’s natural that Savannah City Council go on record and demand that state officials do a better job of protecting the river.
It’s also responsible government.
Indeed, the Chatham County Commission should take a similar stand. So should all county governments downriver from the plant, located in Screven County. That includes the Effingham County Commission, Bryan County Commission, Liberty County Commission and Bulloch County Commission.
“We need to work together as a region…
Mr. Bordeaux is a former state lawmaker who knows how Georgia government works.…
A good way to get the governor to pay attention to what his EPD is doing is to show that the Ogeechee matters to citizens & local government.
Thousands of tons of textiles will soon be diverted from the local waste stream in the Philadelphia region - Bucks, Montgomery, Northeast Philadelphia and Southern Lehigh - thanks to an innovative agreement between textile recycler Community Recycling of Fairless Hills and George Leck and Son Inc., a family-owned and operated waste hauling company based in Ivyland.
In this curbside program, homeowners will be able to recycle clothes and related soft items, paired shoes, bags/belts, known as textiles.
… Adding textile recycling with Community Recycling makes total sense both ecologically and economically.”
According to the U.S. EPA, 85 percent of all discarded textiles – over 11 million tons – are sent to U.S. landfills every year. Community Recycling is an environmentally-conscious textile recycling company that collects unwanted textiles and related materials that are responsibly distributed for reuse, resale and recycling in the US and abroad.
A spirit of collaboration and public-private partnership has set the stage for the western PA-eastern Ohio-northern West Virginia “Tech Belt” to lead the way in revitalizing American manufacturing. The White House announced…Department of Defense will provide $30 million to establish a National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute in Youngstown, Ohio. The federal grant will be matched with about $40 million by the winning consortium from our region.
Additive manufacturing, often referred to as 3D printing, is a promising new way of making products and components.…
TechBelt Initiative…region…stretches from Cleveland to Pittsburgh to Morgantown, represents the 10th highest GDP in the U.S.
This federal grant is a big victory for this “mega-region” because it validates the significance of our world-class concentration of manufacturing expertise and academic research. It puts us on the map for corporations and investors looking for the places that are driving innovation in the country.
The great industrialist Henry Ford once said, "Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success." And so it is with economic development. Collaboration and teamwork always yield greater results than working alone.
As a regional economic development marketing organization, North Louisiana Economic Partnership (NLEP) never works on a project alone. It always collaborates with state and local partners to recruit or help businesses to expand in the 14 northern Louisiana parishes it serves. That's why NLEP's tagline is "Together We Achieve More."
The merger between two local economic development groups to create one regional group, NLEP, represents the first phase of "coming together."…
Case in point: The collaboration across the corridor between Louisiana Tech University in Ruston and Cyber Innovation Center in Bossier City produced a program so successful that it has been selected for a national rollout this summer. The Cyber Discovery model is a professional development program that mentors high school teachers while encouraging students to pursue an education and careers in science, technology, engineering and math: the STEM subjects. …
Middle Georgia leaders like to talk about regional cooperation, but on Friday they put their talk into action.
The county commission chairmen of Bibb, Houston and Peach counties signed an agreement that spells out how each will allocate funds toward resolving encroachment.
That’s the term for residential properties in the area north of Robins Air Force Base considered at risk for crashes and high noise levels. Officials are looking to buy 250 parcels to clear out the homes.
Brad Fink, chairman of the 21st Century Partnership, said encroachment is the top reason bases are closed. The partnership is a community organization that works to promote the military value of Robins, particularly during a BRAC.
“As we sign this today, we will start looking at encroachment as an issue in the rearview mirror, which is great for Robins Air Force Base,” Fink said.
A B.C government transit review panel calls for improved representation for Greater Victoria's transit service, saying the status quo does not allow for efficient regional planning.
The three-member review panel spent five months reviewing B.C. Transit and its relationship as the government's contractor for province-wide transit services.
The report, released Tuesday, considers three options for improving the existing governance model for the Victoria Regional Transportation Commission. A review of the commission does not favour the current model of having just seven representatives from five municipalities making decisions for the whole region.
Members considered two other options, including a transit takeover by the Capital Regional District as well as increasing the size and role of the current commission to improve representation throughout the region.
The study of Greater Victoria's system is part of a province-wide analysis of transit ...
I was prompted by a post on the Smithsonian blog a few months ago to go back to read The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. The Smithsonian post had evaluated the Limits’ 1972 main case projections against actual consumption to 2000, and found them impressively close. Since the most common outcome of the model is “overshoot and collapse”, in a bit more than a decade’s time, it seemed a good idea to understand it a bit better. Quotes and page numbers are from the 30-Year Update edition, published by Earthscan in London in 2005.
The argument of Limits to Growth is built on a model, World3, which has evolved over time, and all models are simplifications. Specifically, it is a systems dynamics model, built around notions of stocks, flows and sinks. Systems models also include delays, which are sometimes poorly understood by economists and technologists – who were among the noisiest critics of the original Limits to Growth book – because their mental and theoretical models assume rapid corrections to systems shortfalls.
...
Extra
A survey released Wednesday by researchers at the University of North Carolina found that despite the many challenges they face, the nation's lowest-income individuals are nonetheless thankful they don't have to endure the unique hardships of the nation's long-suffering middle class.
According to the report, the 46 million Americans who fall below the federal poverty line, though struggling mightily, are at least glad they don't have to live up to some rapidly vanishing American dream of advancing in their career, making more money, and improving their lifestyle, the way their middle-income counterparts do.
"The unrealistic expectations and false hope they experience must be unbearable," Camden, NJ hotel clerk Allison Jacobsen told researchers, noting that while her $22,000 annual salary barely covers her rent and groceries each month, at least she doesn't operate under the flawed assumption that her situation will ever improve. "A life spent constantly stressing out over a dead-end job or struggling to pay off a fixed 30-year mortgage on a continuously depreciating three-bedroom townhouse? It's horrific."
"Can you believe people actually have to live like that?"…
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 Arctic Ocean
1000
 Europe
2000
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 Atlantic Ocean
4000
 Antarctica
5000
 Americas
6000
 Pacific Ocean
7000
 Oceania
8000
 Asia
9000
 Indian Ocean

"Global Region-builder Geo-Code Prototype" ©