Dear Reader –
Promoting regional planning and
cooperation among the 20 local governments of Virginia’s Northern Shenandoah
Valley was my work from 1973-2008. Many people chuckle at the notion that local
governments would cooperate. A businessman from California once asked, “Do you
have any customers?”
The truth was that the Planning
District Commission chartered in 1970 by the member local governments did, over
time, have value. They owned it, having taken the funding incentive that
doubled their money and made them eligible for other grants, but had to learn
how it might be used.
Serving alternately as a as
staff person and director of the Lord Fairfax Planning District Commission, now
the Northern Shenandoah Valley Regional Commission, the region did achieve many
accomplishments including an adopted District Comprehensive Plan; a regional
solid waste management plan that was regularly updated and which become the
basis for a regional tire shredder; regional water resources planning that
involved an Instream Flow study for the North Fork of the Shenandoah River; to
mention a few.
This region was having
achievements at a time when academics claimed regionalism had failed in the
U.S. My work experience as a regional planner led to the thesis: “community precedes
cooperation.” If you want to solve a problem, build community of those whose
cooperation can solve/if not improve on the problem.
Based on that idea, the Regions
Work Initiative was launched in Chicago at the World Future Society, July 20,
1998. The action plan I set out then has guided my exploration and led to many
product prototypes such as global geocodes and the Delicious tags which
indicated both geographic location and topic. The goal was to make organized
regional alignments, such as Planning District Commissions visible nationwide.
The code issue required a global approach.
With 2008, the financial crisis
brought to light the weakness of many economic theories. They were incapable of
predicting what had happened. Massive private debt and the frauds that enabled
it to ruin lending was invisible to most economists. This led to my
consideration of the “profit motive,” which we are taught is what brings
regions and their localities all things good.
I first expressed the idea of a
“community motive” in an online discussion February 25, 2011 as follows:
The profit motive is strong,
but it can only play out in a community. The community motive has led to
civilizations which have economic relationships, internally and externally.
Community infrastructure takes a long time to build. Human capital also takes
generations to build. Both can be easily destroyed in war or natural disaster.
Community economies are not
quickly built. One can learn from another, perhaps speed up the process, but
the profit motive is very short-sighted unless it is tempered by cultural and
religious values.
Thinking there might be some
research along the lines of “community motive,” a later search only found one
comparable use. That was from Aldo Leopold, the environmentalist who, in 1944
wrote: “Acts of conservation without the requisite desire and skills are
futile. To create these desires and skills and the community motive is the task
of education.”
No use of this term in relation
to community development or in contrast to the “profit motive” was found.
Community is, more or less, assumed to exist for localities with long term
perpetuation of the community an implied goal.
In this age, the “profit
motive” is both the goal and driver for all economic activity. Huge problems
are simply those things that attract economic attention by business and
industry. At least, that is what the economists tell us.
The concept was developed
further in the presentation of my working paper: “Community Motive: The
Untapped Identity Factor for Regional Development” at the Regional Studies
Association Global Conference 2012 in Beijing, China on June 24, 2012. It was
at this conference I also suggested we have a 300 year planning horizon.
Recently, when discussing the
many economic, environmental and social challenges ahead, I offer, “Only community will save us.” No one
has disagreed yet. People seem to respond intuitively to the idea of “community
motive,” knowing it does include them. They agree we won’t be saved by a
“profit motive.”
Given the good reception to
this idea, I've chosen to focus on going forward. The blog will become the
space where I weave together the lessons and perspective that my years of
experience, reading and observation now offer.
Happy
Thanksgiving
Tom Christoffel, FeRSA, AICP
Regional/Greater Communities
Motivation
