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
In the wake of the TSPLOST’s overwhelming defeat,
Atlanta Regional Commission Chairman Tad Leithead called on metro leaders to
unite with a new vision that would propel the region to a place of prosperity
over the next 50 years.
Leithead made his remarks during the ARC’s 2012 State of
the Region Breakfast held at the Georgia World Congress Center on Friday.
“I will tell you — and no one in this room will be
surprised — that since July 31 many of you in this room and virtually everyone
I have talked to, they have walked up to me and said, ‘What do we do now?’ They
have said, ‘Does it make sense for us to continue to work together as a
region?’ They have said, ‘Are we doomed in this region to mediocrity? Did we
miss our last big chance? We tried something huge and it failed. Are we doomed
to mediocrity?’ And they have asked, ‘Is there any chance? Do we still have a
shot at excellence, the excellence that we have come to expect in the Atlanta
region?’”
Leithead, who said he was there “to talk to 1,000 of my
closest friends,” said he mulled and stressed over those questions.
Lacing his address with quotes from Abraham Lincoln,
Leithead proposed a vision of what he’d like to see the region look like 50 years
from now. The region would have about 10 million people, have clean and
plentiful water and not have a traffic problem, with residents having access to
a variety of transportation options.
…
Many of us involved
in the creation or advocacy of “sustainable” cities, neighborhoods and metro
regions know what we’re mostly for. That would be communities that:
·
Grow first within the existing development footprint, taking
advantage of existing public infrastructure
·
Integrate functional green space for air, light, recreation,
beauty, and stormwater management
·
Improve public transit, bike accessibility and walkability
·
Encourage a healthy mix of land uses and activities – and
·
Embrace a somewhat higher (though not
necessarily high, depending upon location)
residential and commercial density.
And we also know
what we’re mostly against. That would be:
·
Development that gobbles up working lands and open space, ever-outward in pods of
self-replicating sprawl
·
Otherwise “urban” and urbanizing development that wastes
opportunities to grow in their communities’ central places – and
·
Towns and cities that fail to invest in up-to-date
infrastructure that encourages sensitive revitalization, uses environmental
resources efficiently, permits fast internet services, or that would, with a
bit of foresight, allow public transit to expand and walking and biking to
thrive.
Suburban
preferences are real, if also sometimes elusive
The problem is this: how do we get
to the “promised land” of the first set of characteristics, and avoid the second,
especially in the suburbs? …
There are literally dozens of ways to map the same
community — and dozens more ways to link seemingly disparate communities by
their similarities or shared concerns.
How do you reconcile the priorities of a homeowner with
a developer, a historian with an established business owner, an
environmentalist with a government bureaucracy? Digital maps, compiled with
geographic information systems, are able to communicate more than meets the eye
at first glance. The issue is getting through the layers to the heart of the
matter.
Helping this to happen is what the Central Massachusetts Regional Planning Commission
is all about. From its offices at Union Station, the quasi-public agency,
founded in 1963, attempts every day to reconcile these competing interests with
facts that are often buried, like treasure, in layers of data.
“It can make your head explode thinking about all these
other ways to think about your town,” said Vera Kolias, a principal planner at
CMRPC. “Our function is to facilitate the planning process while providing all
of this data from all parties and showing connections between them. Can we connect
communities together with shared priority areas?”
The agency is one of 13 regional planning agencies in
Massachusetts. Each of the agencies is entrusted with helping the communities
within their mandate to manage their development and preservation priorities.
…
The Northern Sacramento Valley Integrated Regional Water
Management Plan Board is asking organizations to submit proposed projects and
programs for review and possible inclusion in the North Sacramento Valley
Integrated Regional Water Management Plan.
This step is part of the plan's development process.
The Northern Sacramento Valley Integrated Regional Water
Management Plan is an effort involving six counties in the North State to
address water-related issues and develop a regional plan. Counties involved in
this project include Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Tehama, Shasta, and Sutter.
Factors to be integrated into the plan include economic
health and vitality, water supply reliability, management of flood and
stormwater, water quality improvements, and ecosystem protection and
enhancement.
The goal is to develop the plan by September 2013.
Representatives of the six counties are working in partnership with community stakeholders, tribes and the public to identify the water-related needs…
Representatives of the six counties are working in partnership with community stakeholders, tribes and the public to identify the water-related needs…
It’s been a
source of bricks-and-mortar development, a vital part of the Upstate’s economic
development and an integral part of the region’s transportation system.
Yet, it’s also
placed between Charlotte and Atlanta, two aviation powerhouses that in the past
have siphoned its air passenger traffic. It also has generated sweaty palms as
efforts to lure Southwest Airlines, and hopes of lower airfares, ebbed and
flowed for years.
…
One of the state’s largest success stories — BMW’s decision 20 years ago to locate the German company’s North American auto assembly plant in the Upstate — is more than partially tied to GSP.
…
One of the state’s largest success stories — BMW’s decision 20 years ago to locate the German company’s North American auto assembly plant in the Upstate — is more than partially tied to GSP.
The airport was a
key piece, along with the Port of Charleston and other facilities, in BMW’s
perception of where to locate the plant, which now thrives in Greer, said South
Carolina Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt.
The company
wanted “redundant systems” for parts distribution to alleviate concerns about
its ability to succeed in the U.S., said Hitt, former manager...
The Massachusetts Office of Business Development has
awarded $100,000 to the SouthCoast Development Partnership as part of $950,000
in grants for regional economic development organizations throughout the state.
Anchored at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth,
which lends staff support to the group, the SouthCoast Development Partnership
helps coordinate regional economic development, according to Paul Vigeant, the
university's assistant chancellor for economic development.
Members of the steering committee include mayors of New
Bedford and Fall River, legislators and representatives from the New Bedford
Economic Development Council and the Fall River Office of Economic Development.
"This grant is to help promote the region as a
desirable location for business investment. We use it to brand the region as
the SouthCoast," Vigeant said. "We are focused on trying to attract
very high-tech sectors down here," ranging from biotechnology to marine
science...
A growing number of companies have recognized the
financial, operational and strategic advantages of implementing sustainability
practices – enhanced focus on outstanding environmental, social and financial
performance – within their organizations. But there are still many businesses
of all sizes that have not yet begun to incorporate sustainability steps, or
that have done so only sparingly. Such companies are missing out on chances to
reduce business risk and improve business financial performance and strategic
position.
The companies that are leading the way in obtaining the
greatest business value from their sustainability programs are those that
recognize that, for the 21st century company, sustainability is just as
mission-critical as any other vital function, such as quality, customer service
or employee safety. The function and practice that sustainability has the most
in common with is quality, and in many ways, the phrase, “sustainability is the
new quality” captures the importance of sustainability for the company that
wants to thrive in the 21st century.
Here are the key similarities and reasons why the wise,
proactive company should view sustainability as being just as critical to near-
and long-term success as a focus on quality:
Both have gone through a historical and conceptual
progression from passive reactivity to proactive, strategic integration ...
Joined-up thinking. Collaboration. Cooperation. These
are the buzz words of 2012, but few companies – or countries – truly put them
into action.
Not so in the Netherlands. The Loadstar has often
mentioned the enviable logistics strategy of this small trading nation, and it
never ceases to impress. And it has lessons that could be learned by others
throughout the global industry.
The latest example of common sense and pragmatism is
from Schiphol Airport. For readers that don’t know well the typical marketing
strategy of airports, it’s this: a map, with the airport right in the middle,
showing how central the location is. It is always about the location – and when
things don’t go well, airports tend to blame their geography…
The people of Amsterdam, though, don’t seem to feel the
same way. If the trade lanes aren’t there, they create one. And that is what
they are doing with their new pharmaceutical strategy…a coordinated strategy to
improve the pharma-logistics trade in the region.
Successive governments have started to grasp what we in
Greater Manchester, and our colleagues in England's other core cities, have
been arguing forcibly for some time: cities are crucial engines of economic
growth with the capacity to help rebalance the nation's economy by acting as a
counterweight to London and the south east.
We have long maintained that many of the issues which
shape the success of our area including transport, housing, economic
development, skills and job creation, are best addressed at a city regional
level.
It's fair to say that devolution,
localism - call it what you will - is an idea whose time has come. In Greater
Manchester, we welcomed the current government's appointment of a minister for
cities and its increasing recognition of the role of cities.
Because of the mature and
long-standing collaborative relationship between the ten Greater Manchester authorities -
transcending political differences to focus on economic priorities - we were
well positioned to respond to this new climate.
The establishment
in April 2011 of the Greater
Manchester Combined Authority, the first of its kind in the
country, took this co-operation to a new level and put it on a statutory
footing. Working alongside other Greater Manchester-wide bodies such as Transport for Greater
Manchester and the Local
Enterprise Partnership, we have much greater scope to plan for
growth.
…
The vulnerability of cities and suburbs in the
post-petroleum era has been the object of much debate because their present
organization makes their operation so energy-intensive. The debate heretofore
has tended to swing between two extremes. One claims that these forms of social
organization on the land are so unsustainable that their populations will be
forced to abandon them gradually as the energy descent progresses.
James Kunstler, a well-known critic of the kind of
cities and suburbs that have emerged in recent decades, puts it bluntly:
The whole suburban project I think can be summarized
pretty succinctly as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of
the world. America took all of its post-war wealth and invested it in a living
arrangement that has no future.
The other extreme entertains dreams of massive programs
of public transportation to save suburbia. It also relies heavily on
technologies like high-rise agriculture and on the efficiencies of
population...
Extra
It is a general rule of
life that the longer a document is, the less it matters. I have just read all
1,374 pages of the Strategic Environmental
Assessment for the revocation
of the South East Plan, published last week. Does this document matter?
Not one jot, except for one important lesson, which I’ll come to in a moment.
Everything regional is
out of favour at the moment. Quite rightly, too. When I lived in Oxfordshire I
did not feel that I belonged to “the South East”. Now I live in Shropshire, I
do not for a moment consider that I am part of “the West Midlands”. Regional
government has, thankfully, had a brief life. John Major launched the
Government Offices of the Regions in 1994. John Prescott added the Regional
Development Agencies and the Regional Assemblies in 1998. Now the assemblies,
agencies and offices are no more.
All of this would be
nothing more than a footnote in history if it were not for one lingering legacy
of regionalisation – regional strategies. …
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Basic Geocodes -
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Geocode
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Geography
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Wikipedia
page link
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0000
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Earth
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0900
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Arctic Ocean
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1000
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Europe
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2000
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Africa
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3000
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Atlantic Ocean
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4000
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Antarctica
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5000
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Americas
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6000
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Pacific Ocean
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7000
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Oceania
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8000
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Asia
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9000
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Indian Ocean
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"Global Region-builder Geo-Code
Prototype" ©
