Community Motive 🌎🌍🌏Think Local Planet, Act Regionally!: May 25, 2012

Dear colleagues

The Regional Studies Association has been approached by DG Regio and been asked to circulate a call for expressions of interest for urban and regional analysts to act as advisors and experts on EU Cohesion Policy. We are pleased to pass on this call to you and if your work is in any of the diverse fields listed below we strongly encourage you to take the short time necessary to register your interest.

The Regional Studies Association has a close relationship with DG Regio as evidenced by our contributions to the DG Regio Open Days University, our management of the DG Regio Early Career Poster Competition and our joint organisation of the first academic debate following publication of the Fifth Cohesion Report in 2011 (the Bled Conference, Slovenia).

This call offers a significant opportunity to make an input to cohesion policy and we ask you to read the short statement below from Professor Philip McCann who is Special Advisor to Commissioner Hahn and to consider registering your interests.

Sally Hardy

Chief Executive

Regional Studies Association

Calls for Expression of Interest for Urban and Regional Analysts to Support EU Cohesion Policy

The Regional Studies Association is pleased to support the following call for Expression of Interest for Urban and Regional Analysts to Support EU Cohesion Policy.

The European Commissioner for Regional Policy Dr Johannes Hahn gave keynote lectures during the Regional Studies Association Annual European Conference that took place in Newcastle, UK 17th-20th April 2011, as well as during the European Regional Science Congress in Barcelona in September 2011.

Commissioner Hahn announced at both events that the European Commission would be seeking to mobilise the European-wide academic expertise in urban and regional issues in order to facilitate, strengthen and improve the new generation of EU Cohesion Policy programmes.

The European Commission has now opened a call for urban and regional analysts from all over Europe to offer their skills and knowledge in order to help with the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the new generation of Cohesion Policy programmes over the coming years.

In order for urban and regional analysts to become part of the network of experts which the European Commission can draw on to support EU Cohesion Policy, two Calls for Expression of Interest have been opened in which analysts are requested to register their details and areas of expertise with the European Commission Directorate-General for Regional Policy.

The Regional Studies Association is joining the European Commission in its call and strongly encourages all concerned members of the Association as well as the wider community to register as experts for this extraordinary opportunity.

To register as experts working with the European Commission Directorate-General for Regional Policy for the two calls for urban and regional analysts to register as experts, please click here.

The two calls which experts are specifically requested to respond to are:

· Call for expression of interest to establish a list of experts to assist the Directorate-General for Regional Policy in the appraisal, implementation and monitoring of cohesion policy interventions

TED: 2012/S 55-088796

· · Call for expressions of interest in the field of evaluation in connection with activities of the Directorate-General for Regional Policy

TED: 2012/S 45-072740

This is an important moment in the history of EU Cohesion Policy and a unique chance for the European-wide expertise in urban and regional issues to help deliver the well-designed, well-run and well-evaluated policies we want to see. There are a very large number of programmes and projects within EU Cohesion Policy operating in different Member States, in different regions, and which focus on different thematic priorities and with different objectives. A wide range of expertise is required covering issues such as innovation; R&D; energy and resources; entrepreneurship; environment and climate change; human capital; information and communication technologies; transport; real estate and land use; social inclusion; heritage and culture; infrastructure; labour markets; demographic transitions; housing; rural areas; maritime regions and fisheries; governance and institutions; public administration; combating poverty; and experts in all of these fields are needed from all parts of the EU.

It is important that experts start registering now, as many of the issues to be considered are already beginning to arise.

Philip McCann

Special Adviser to the European Commissioner for Regional Policy, Johannes Hahn

25.05.2012

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!

A call for expressions of interest for urban and regional analysts to act as advisors and experts on EU Cohesion Policy

"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

Regional Community News

Financial Crisis - New Necessity for Cooperation

Slideshare - PowerPoints and PDFs

Regional "Communites of Practice"

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