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
Is it time to start saying: “Some of our Adirondack
communities are not dying, they are dead”? …
A Divided Land?
…
Do We Have a Park?
…
What is “Community”?
…
An Adirondack Doctrine
…
A Tri-Lakes Economic Center?
…
A Regional Community
From an Adirondack Park perspective, we may need to
focus more on regions than on communities. In our effort to save everyone we
may save no one.
And the environmental community needs to recognize this
too. As our basic amenities go away, the strain of over usage in certain areas
like the High Peaks will continue to worsen while other natural areas of the
Park become abandoned.
Before talking about “smart growth” and “sustainable
life” we may need to agree on first creating a true Park and that our efforts
focus on regional economic centers.
This may take changing historical local and APA
boundaries. For example, is it possible to trade building rights or density not
from the same property owner but between different private and public lands to
make appropriate development happen to create these regional economic centers?
More importantly it may require a change of perspective
of what is a “sustainable community” in the future to one of a more regional definition.
Perhaps that will be a real test if indeed we have
achieved consensus which may need to begin with the creation of a true
"sense of place" we call a Park.
The proposed
transportation sales tax got steamrolled by voters Tuesday, with 63 percent
voting against the plan to raise billions for a controversial list of projects
aimed at unsnarling traffic and improving transit in a 10-county region. So
what’s next? We asked two leaders on each side of the T-SPLOST issue to suggest
what needs to be done to find regional consensus.
…
By Bucky Johnson (Norcross mayor and was chairman of the
T-SPLOST regional transportation roundtable)
Over the past 15
months, I have had the opportunity to travel around the region to speak about
the Transportation Investment Act of 2010. There was overwhelming agreement
that metro Atlanta has a transportation problem. This was the first time in the
history of metro Atlanta that a regional vote for transportation improvements
has been attempted. …
By Steve Brown (Fayette County commissioner)
Easing metro Atlanta traffic congestion will require a
systemic transformation of the bureaucratic process we now endure.
…
Economic development, often a hot topic, came to a boil in
Peoria last week.
…more than 200 community leaders attended a session at
the Peoria Civic Center to create "a more successful regional economic
strategy."
In a lightning strike, a determined faction of the
community had staged a coup, upsetting the established economic development
apple cart. You don't see that very often in Peoria.
McConoughey's 10-year tenure as Heartland head was not
without accomplishment, but the cry for regional collaboration and
administrative transparency called for change.
Consultant Frank Knott, brought in last year to research
the issue by the Tri-County Regional Planning Commission, shared his findings
at the July 26 program at the Civic Center.
He started with the fact that central Illinois has
plenty of assets but wasn't making the best use of those advantages.
Those that stormed the EDC palace promoted democracy.
"Of the 300 community leaders we interviewed, many said they were being
asked for their input for the first time," said Knott.
…
Telecommunication upgrades and trees are among the
tangible benefits the Tampa Bay area will see right away as a result of the
Republican National Convention, but the most lasting impact of the gathering
may be regional economic development cooperation.
The RNC … offers
local businesses, governments and civic groups an unprecedented opportunity to
work together to promote the area nationally as a good place to do business,
said panelists at the Tampa Bay Business Journal's "The Economy
Convention" event Monday afternoon at the University of Tampa.
A new regional economic development agency emerged after
the last RNC in 2008 in the Twin Cities, Melvin Tennant, president and CEO of
Meet Minneapolis, Convention & Visitors Association.
The opportunity here is enhanced because there are new
elected and appointed officials in key posts who are not interested in fighting
about political and geographic boundaries, said Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn.
"Those days are over, as well they should be,"
Buckhorn said. …
Regional government consolidation? Progressives won’t
touch it. California municipalities careening toward bankruptcy don’t mention
it. Leaders of the national movement for land banks talk about
inside-the-boundaries development schemes, and sometimes about regional
land-use planning, but they throw up their hands at it.
The tax bases of shrinking Rust Belt cities are too
small to sustain services and meet infrastructure requirements, …
But except for a recent letter to the editor of the
Syracuse daily newspaper, a letter proposing that the soon-to-be-broke City of
Syracuse decertify itself as a separate entity so that Onondaga County can
become the greater city and take over city functions, American urbanists don’t
talk consolidation.
Instead, the newest version of the City Beautiful
movement is underway. …
Across the land, city governments and town governments
and county governments go it alone, pursuing developments alone, pursuing
financial work-outs alone, electing and re-electing crowds of officials each by
themselves, drawing up master plans that rarely intersect, hiring consultants
to do studies and to propose alternatives that somehow, inevitably, leave every
boundary unchanged. A senior bond attorney on Wall Street once told me that
while he understands the rationale for consolidation, his firm wouldn’t be
helpful anytime soon, because each issuance of a bond by each city, town,
county, school district, sewer authority, or other entity was a fee to his
firm. The historically low interest rates of today provide a fabulous
opportunity to gather up lots and lots of old outstanding debt, bundle it up,
create new super-entities (like, oh, regional or metro-wide governments) and
get rid of all the clutter—or at least some of it—but the municipal bond
industry isn’t the outfit that is going to make it happen.
Meanwhile, luminaries at various Washington think tanks
employ the term “metro” and “metropolitan,” but neither they nor their
conferees, being generally short on the experience of ever having tried to
adjust the boundaries of a shrinking city, address the linked problems of
tax-base shrinkage, depopulation, sprawl, aging infrastructure, and
abandonment.
…
Former Met Council Chairman Ted Mondale said public
officials in other states are envious that Minnesota has a regional planning
agency like the Met Council.
…
Called one of the best ideas on governance ever to come
out of Minnesota by a former chairman — called other things by irate city
councils — the 3,600-employee strong Met Council casts a long shadow in the
seven-county metro area.
The agency, comprised of three separate operating
divisions — transportation, environmental services and community development —
oversees 600 miles of regional sewer lines, collecting wastewater from 106
metro communities, two million residents.
… the Met Council, regardless whether a Republican or
Democratic governor is in power — governors appoint the 17-member council —
just upsets some people.
…
One affordable housing advocate views the stars aligning
at the Met Council.
“I think looking forward it’s promising,” said Executive
Director Chip Halbach of the Minnesota Housing Partnership, a coalition of
organizations focused on homelessness and affordable housing.
…
The Met Council current annual budget is about $778
million.
About 39 percent of the council operating budget is
state funding, with wastewater treatment charges making up about 22 percent of
the revenue.
Baseball in the Bottom is back
in the news. The zombie of two failed campaigns to build a baseball stadium in
Shockoe Bottom walks again. No doubt, there will be much said about that zombie
in coming months.
…
Meanwhile, just because people
keep bragging about what a perfect economic driver baseball will be if you put
it here, or there, doesn’t make any of it true.
Using minor league baseball to
fix the perceived problems of a blighted neighborhood probably won’t work and
saying it has worked that way in several other markets isn’t true. Comparing
what has happened in minor league cities with Major League Baseball's history
is a reach.
…
Let’s face it, as long as the
City of Richmond won’t allow Henrico County and Chesterfield County fair
representation on the Richmond Metropolitan Authority's board, any talk about
regional cooperation to build ANYTHING under its auspices is a waste of time.
…
Six New England states led by Massachusetts plan to
coordinate purchases of renewable energy, leveraging their scale for better
pricing and encourage more clean energy diversity in the region.
The move follows Massachusetts' own move to encourage a
competitive bidding process for renewable energy projects.
Under the resolution passed unanimously during the New
England Governor's Conference in late July 2012, the New England States
Committee on Electricity (NESCOE) will develop a request for proposals to be
issued in 2013.
The resolution directs "NESCOE and their regulatory
and policy officials to implement the work plan and any regulatory proceedings
or procedures as are necessary or appropriate to execute the coordinated
competitive regional procurement of renewable power, with the goal of issuing a
solicitation for procurement by the end of December 2013."
...
Two separate geological studies released this week
suggest the earth-quake hazard in the transboundary region of the Pacific Coast
of North America - including southern British Columbia - is significantly
greater than previously believed.
Both teams of U.S. scientists are urging heightened
readiness throughout the region for a future offshore "mega-thrust"
event that could compare with the one that triggered Japan's
earth-quake-tsunami-nuclear catastrophe last year.
In one study - a 13-year comprehensive analysis of the
Cascadia earth-quake-prone zone between Vancouver Island and Northern
California - a team of researchers concluded the "clock is ticking"
ahead of a potentially devastating earthquake in the region within the next 50
years.
…
"Over the past 10,000 years, there have been 19
earthquakes that extended along most of the margin, stretching from southern
Vancouver Island to the Oregon-California border. These would typically be of a
magnitude from about 8.7 to 9.2 - really huge earthquakes."
…
A Wairarapa business group and think tank has rejected
the need for the region to join with Wellington, saying business will be better
off with one regional district.
Consultants working on the Wairarapa Governance Review
decided the region would be best served by one authority – a Wairarapa district
council, born out of amalgamating South Wairarapa, Masterton and Carterton
district councils.
Self-funded Wairarapa Development Group agrees. Chairman
Shane McManaway is reluctant to see the region swallowed up in the greater
Wellington area.
The capital city is in the throes of its own local
government review, which includes an option to create a supercity type council,
encompassing its northern neighbour.
“We don’t believe a unitary authority is good for the
region. We don’t believe we have enough critical mass as an entity to get the
value of the big powerhouse that the Wellington regional council can give us,”
Mr McManaway told NBR ONLINE.
…
Extra
This new study explores the implications of a major
financial crisis for the supply-chains that feed us, keep production running
and maintain our critical infrastructure. I use a scenario involving the
collapse of the Eurozone to show that increasing socio-economic complexity
could rapidly spread irretrievable supply-chain failure across the world.
…
It is argued that in order to understand systemic risk
in the globalised economy, account must be taken of how growing complexity
(interconnectedness, interdependence and the speed of processes), the
de-localisation of production and concentration within key pillars of the
globalised economy have magnified global vulnerability and opened up the
possibility of a rapid and large-scale collapse. ‘Collapse’ in this sense means
the irreversible loss of socio-economic complexity which fundamentally
transforms the nature of the economy. These crucial issues have not been
recognised by policy-makers nor are they reflected in economic thinking or
modelling.
…
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