1. Economic 'Meta-Plan' is focus at regional development meeting - Toledo Free Press - OH, USA

A who's who of Northwest Ohio's economic development community met Nov. 30 at the Dana Conference Center to identify opportunities for coordination and collaboration among their organizations.

The leaders of the Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Lucas County Improvement Corporation, the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments (TMACOG), the Regional Growth Partnership (RGP) and the UT Science and Technology Corridor, and representatives from the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, the Ohio Department of Development and the City of Toledo Department of Development presented at the Meta-Plan workshop and participated in a question-and-answer session with other local business leaders that attended the event. Ohio Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher delivered the workshop's keynote address.

Dan Johnson, UT president emeritus and one of the event's organizers, said the session was “historic” because it was the first time leaders from Northwest Ohio's main economic development agencies met under one roof to share their organizations' missions and goals and identify unifying themes to advance regional economic development.

“This was a bold step for all of our economic development leaders to agree toward some common goals and objectives, ” Johnson said.

Communication among the staffs from the organizations represented at the workshop has happened regularly in the past, Johnson said. What was not happening was that communication reaching the executive level of those groups, he said.

…

“The key to economic development is attitude, ” Fisher said.

Once implemented and if proven to be successful, the Meta-Plan could serve as an economic development model for the entire state, Fisher said. He said the region should leverage its strengths such as its wind and water resources.

Neil Reid, director of the UT Urban Affairs Center and an associate professor of geography and planning, presented his analysis of possible local industry clusters —

…

  2. Dispute between planning organizations boils over - Kentucky-com - Lexington, KY, USA

The two primary regional-planning organizations in Central Kentucky are not seeing eye-to-eye on their missions or on specific ways to bring about regional cooperation. What one official described as a "festering" disagreement came to a head yesterday at a special meeting of the Bluegrass Area Development District.

The object of the development district's ire is Bluegrass Tomorrow, a private, non-profit regional planning organization that advocates such issues as controlled growth, new urbanism and farmland preservation.

The major complaint from Lenny Stoltz II, executive director of the government-funded Bluegrass ADD, focused on an economic analysis that was underwritten by Bluegrass Tomorrow and unveiled at a regional summit of elected officials in March. The analysis said communities in the region relied far too much on payroll taxes for revenue. That left them vulnerable when high-paying manufacturing jobs left town and were replaced by lower-paying jobs, usually in the retail sector.

The report, called the Bluegrass Regional Economic Analysis, supported a recommendation first made by a bipartisan task force that called for amending Kentucky's Constitution to give communities more flexibility in levying new taxes, such as a sales tax. The report also said that a portion of any new tax revenue should be shared regionally and used for economic development and to improve quality of life.

But Bluegrass ADD does not want its name "used on any initiative to get new taxes, " Stoltz said. "Bluegrass Tomorrow is off their mission (by) pursuing revenue sharing and new taxes."

Steve Austin, president and CEO of Bluegrass Tomorrow, who was not invited to yesterday's meeting, tried to stay above the fracas. He said his group was not pushing a constitutional amendment. "Bluegrass Tomorrow cannot lobby. We simply put an idea out there. The tax amendment is moving on of its own accord."

...

 

  3. Premier seeks regional peace - Edmonton Sun - Alberta, Canada

... the Capital Region Integrated Growth Management Plan gets rolled out to the 25 bickering municipal councils in and around Edmonton.

50-YEAR-OLD ISSUES

"I have great confidence in the leadership of all the municipalities, " Stelmach said, without a lot of conviction. "Some of these issues have been around for 50 years."

The latest Edmonton municipal pol to make taxing Refinery Row and Upgrader Alley either his political hill to die on, or a smokescreen for his own leadership shortcomings, is Mayor Stephen Mandel.

He's anticipated by legislature city hall watchers to turn into his usual petulant self the moment the document is officially delivered.

Mayor Cathy Olesen has already launched a pre-emptive strike on Strathcona County's website, saying the plan raises "serious concerns and questions."

She claimed the proposed as-yet-unnamed board will have "authority over local municipalities including taxing powers."

Of course, it's the tax revenue from plants in Sturgeon, Lamont and especially Strathcona counties that Howie covets.

"We are committed to paying our fair share of costs related to necessary regional projects, " Olesen continued, but only local municipal councils, who are "accountable to their taxpayers, " should make the choices.

"There's no revenue sharing, " Stelmach insisted. "It's a recommendation for cost allocation."

There may be a difference, but it's a subtle one.

If a draft of the deal is anything to go by - and this is going to make Mandel madder than he already is - the cost- sharing mechanism "is not an unconditional transfer of revenue between jurisdictions."

In other words, Edmonton's socialist city council won't be allowed to build frills like art gallery staircases or $20-million bicycle bridges with Refinery Row tax money.

It will go to backstop the municipal share of costs "for projects that benefit the entire region."

...

 

  4.  New Central Florida Partnership announced - Bizjournals.com

The Central Florida Partnership was launched today to unite area organizations to work together on solving regional problems.

The Central Florida Partnership is a new umbrella organization for the following groups: Myregion-org, Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Foundation for Building Community, BusinessForce and Leadership Orlando.

Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce members today voted unanimously to approve the change. "It really comes down to transforming the chamber so we can help transform the region, " says Kelley Mossburg, chairman of the Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Some of the new partnership's priorities include:

·         Promoting public policy that benefits the region, including planning for transportation systems for residents and tourists

·         Creating the best regional entrepreneurial system in the Americas

·         Benchmarking success relative to other regions in the world

·         Tracking and supporting the progress of multi-county compacts through the process called "How Shall We Grow?"

Jacob Stuart, current president of the Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce, will be president and CEO of the Central Florida Partnership. Des Cummings, president of the Florida Hospital Foundation, be the Central Florida Partnership's inaugural chairman in 2008.

…

RC: East Central Florida Regional Planning Council

 

  5. Cato Study Finds Regional Planning Makes Homes Unaffordable - Reuters – USA

Close to 40 percent of Americans live in states and regions where growth-management planning has reduced housing affordability.  According to a new study by the Cato Institute, such planning is the primary cause of the recent housing bubble.

In "The Planning Tax, " Cato senior fellow Randal O'Toole shows how regional growth management drives up the cost of housing. "Growth management planning -- planning and zoning that seeks to promote the general welfare by controlling the development of all urban and rural land within a state or region -- makes housing unaffordable by limiting the amount of vacant land that is readily accessible for new housing, " O'Toole writes. The planning tax that these policies impose on aspiring homeowners can be enormous, reaching as high as $700, 000 for a median home in the San Francisco Bay Area. These artificially inflated prices have also contributed to destructive bubbles in the housing industry.

Successful growth doesn't necessarily entail high home prices, as demonstrated by rapidly growing regions like Atlanta, Dallas-Ft. Worth, and Houston. "These examples show that the key to housing affordability is the existence of relatively unregulated private land in unincorporated areas near to the cities, " says O'Toole. "Most expensive housing markets in the U.S. have plenty of private land that is physically suitable for development; it has just been closed to development by urban-growth boundaries or other government restrictions."

O'Toole recommends that Congress eliminate requirements that urban areas must be represented by metropolitan planning organizations and that states repeal growth-management planning laws. If they do not, he concludes, "The predictable result will be increasingly unaffordable housing, declining homeownership rates, and a growing disparity between the elite who own their own homes and a significant number of families who will never become  homeowners."

Link to study: www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8811

 

 6. Regional Logistics Council Looks to '08 - Memphis Daily News – Memphis, TN

…

The Regional Logistics Council was created under the auspices of the Memphis Regional Chamber. The council's chairman is Arnold Perl, an attorney who also serves as chairman of the Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority; the council's vice chairman is Keith Ingram of West Memphis-based Razorback Concrete Co.

The city's business and civic leaders formed the council in late 2004 for two reasons, Muller noted.

"Logistics is a huge, targeted industry for our community; nothing happens by coincidence, " he said. "If you're going to make something improve, it's because you're making a concerted effort to do it, and that's what we're trying to do with this council."

That decision was aided by an analysis completed a few years ago by Charlotte, N.C.-based Michael Gallis and Associates, which said that Memphis needed some kind of logistics authority or council to help the city better tap into its role as "America's Distribution Center."

Moreover, a council would give Memphis' large number of logistics and distribution professionals the chance to lend their insights to the city's myriad logistics and distribution issues.

"We've got world-class expertise in Memphis that deals with logistics, " Muller said. "These folks know what to do. They know how to improve Memphis' ability to be a logistics center. So we needed their ideas."

All roads lead here

The council comprises four committees that reflect the areas of relevance to logistics. They are infrastructure, marketing, workforce development and strategic alliances.

…

RC: Memphis Area Association of Governments

       1420 Union Avenue, Suite 41, Memphis, Tennessee  38104-3695

 

  7. Atlanta Named First AP Regional Editing Hub; Three More To Follow - Editor & Publisher – USA

Atlanta will be the first of four regional editing hubs to be established the Associated Press, Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll said Friday. The remaining three, where all editing functions for multiple states will be done, have yet to be named.

AP recently announced its plan to regionalize editing operations in four hub cities representing bureaus in the South, East, West, and Central regions.

Atlanta will be the southern hub, taking content from 13 states and Washington, D.C. Those states are: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware.

"We are trying to get a reasonably like-sized set of four, " Carroll told E&P about the breakdown of states for each hub. "The south is a lot easier to do. But when you get on the shoulders of some of the regions, it gets difficult."

Carroll said the regionalizing is an effort to consolidate editing operations so that content flows through the process more quickly and some staffers can be transferred to non-editing positions. "It will be moving work around, not necessarily people, " she explained.

When asked if the regionalizing will mean fewer editing eyes on content, Carroll said, "There will be plenty of the right kinds of eyes." She cited an internal study last summer that found some AP content is reviewed by as many as 45 people.

…

Under AP's longstanding procedure, copy from each state is edited through its state bureau and sent from there. Under the new approach, each state will keep its news editor, but send content through its regional hub for editing. " ...

    8. New venture makes Sweden more accessible - Boarding-no - Stavanger, Rogaland, Norway

Sweden Door-to-Door is being developed in cooperation between RTS, the Swedish Travel and Tourist Industry Federation, and a number of public players. Sweden Door-to-Door will be the world’s first national and neutral service to coordinate all information required for booking and purchasing trips within a country. Consequently, Sweden’s entire range of transportation will be accessible and available for consumers, who can plan, book and purchase for their trips on the single site.

The objective of Sweden Door-to-Door is to satisfy people’s demands for simple and efficient travel from point A to point B. All means of travel will be accessible and bookable based on personal preferences in terms of prices, travel time or mode of transport. By linking Sweden’s transport and tourist offerings, Sweden Door-to-Door is expected to contribute to strong growth within the travel and tourism industry, which will also generate regional development and new job opportunities.

- We have already launched a national travel planner, and we will now link our entire country for Swedish and foreign visitors. Travellers will have the possibility of travel that is sustainable, economic and simple. Capacity utilisation of Swedish infrastructure will be better and more efficient when all travel alternatives become visible, ” says Jan Lundin, Managing Director, Swedish Travel and Tourist Industry Federation, who is the principal and owner of Sweden Door-to-Door.

- We want to make it easier for everyone to travel sustainably. In their work on the government-sponsored assignment KOLL framåt**, the Road and Rail Administrations have seen that Sweden Door-to-Door provides for many of the needs and demands of travellers, the business sector and decision-makers, ” says Hans Rode, Head of Development at the Swedish National Road Administration.

...

 

  9. A national fight for saner streets - Seattle Times, United States

The cause has simmered for years — and we've all felt some of it: frustration with fast traffic that turns streets through our neighborhoods into corridors of fear. There is a resentment about narrow, rough or nonexistent sidewalks, a reluctance to have children walking to school cross high-speed roadways. Bicyclists take their lives in their hands when venturing onto major roads.

Now, finally, there's an organized nationwide movement to fight the good fight for saner streets. It's a coalition mounting a nationwide campaign for city and town roadways that include safe, quality space for pedestrians and cyclists and public-transit users, accommodating their wishes just as seriously as those of car and truck drivers.

It's called, fittingly, the Complete the Streets movement (www.completestreets.org). Its members cover an amazing gambit — from America Bikes and AARP, Smart Growth America and the American Society of Landscape Architects to Paralyzed Veterans of America. The Institute of Transportation Engineers is even on board, amazing for a profession long known as the "throughput crowd" for its pushing of maximum numbers of vehicles at maximum feasible speed through cities and villages alike.

…

States and cities are getting the message. Illinois this fall passed a complete-streets law requiring the state's transportation department to include bicycling and walking facilities in all its urban-area projects. Five other states (Massachusetts, Florida, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island) now have some form of complete-streets law on the books. More than 50 metro regions, counties or cities — Charlotte to Johnson County, Kan., Salt Lake City to Seattle — have passed similar statutes.

…

10. U.S. regional communities - sub-State, State or multi-State - in news articles. Highlighted words are Google search terms. In this and the following section, links to websites of organizations are added to the news excerpt when this is the first time an organization has been found. A goal of this newsletter is to find every regional council in the U.S. in a news story.  In most cases, where a full name is present a Google search will quickly get one to that organization. 

    .10  Daley demands stop to CTA doomsday 'merry-go-round'
Chicago Sun-Times - United States
Mayor Daley demanded today that the Illinois General Assembly stop the CTA "merry-go-round where we go from one doomsday to another" and approve long-term funding for mass transit by Dec. 31, with or without a capital plan tied to casino gambling. … renewed plug for the regional sales tax increase …

 

    .11  Group backs idea of regional film commission
La Crosse Tribune - La Crosse, WI, USA
... endorsed forming the Film Commission of Western Wisconsin, which would operate through the Pump House Regional Arts Center. ... the film commission could bring a steady source of new revenue for the region. …

 

    .12  For New Orleans, report sends a familiar message on growing jobs
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette - Fort Wayne, IN, USA
The City Council endorsed the concept of a partnership last month, but was chilly to another old idea pushed by RAND - doing economic development regionally ...

 

    .13  Oregon regional fire unit reviewed
MLive.com - MI, USA
"There's nothing in it for the chiefs, " said Jeff Johnson, the chief of Portland's regional fire district. "They're risking their careers. ...

 

    .14  Communities express interest in thinking regionally
MetroWest Daily News - Framingham, MA, USA
The state needs to do more to allow regional cooperation among metrowest cities and towns, local officials said yesterday. ...

 

    .15  State Rep. Strow quits to take regional post
State Rep. Chris Strow is leaving the Washington Legislature to take a policy post with the Puget Sound Regional Council.

… He'll be principal economic policy analyst for the council that serves King, Snohomish, Pierce and Kitsap counties.

 

    .16  Napa wineries protest geographic name laws
decanter-com - London, UK
Napa vintners are up in arms over proposals to allow wine labels to carry geographic names regardless of whether grapes from the region are in the bottle. ...  The proposed rules would apply to all US wine regions. …

 

    .17  Cooperation could keep water flowing
Daily News Journal (subscription) - Murfreesboro, TN, USA
The governor, however, gave himself an F for regional cooperation because he was never able to forge any agreements during his time as Nashville mayor. ...

 

    .18   Across the Metro: Funkhouser still wants regional light rail
Kansas City Star - MO, USA
Mayor Mark Funkhouser said Wednesday he would seek legislation in 2008 for a regional transportation board and funding that could create a $4.5 billion ...

 

    .19  Center for Regional Studies takes top prize
UNR NevadaNews -
The University of Nevada, Reno’s Center for Regional Studies recently won first place in the Community Development category at the University Economic Development Association’s Annual Summit in Portland, Ore.

 

    .20  Can Where You Live Lead To An Early Death?
Science Daily (press release) - USA
For people in five regions of the United States, their choice of where to live may significantly impact longevity. Four areas -- the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia, Coastal Plains along the East Coast, and northern Nevada-- have clusters of counties with some of the highest mortality rates nationwide. ...

 

    .21  Joint housing task force finally meets
C-Ville Weekly - Charlottesville, VA, USA
By the end of the meeting, that charge had been tweaked to add another aspiration—to "identify cross jurisdictional opportunities for collaborative ...

 

    .22  Most communities have met water-cut requirement
Atlanta Journal Constitution - GA, USA
… companies are asking questions about this region's ability to manage water needs. "This is a wake-up call, " Williams said. "We're talking about the need for better planning." …

 

    .23  Regional water authority proposed
Rome News-Tribune 
“I think we’re going to have to have a regional authority, ” Polk County Commission Chairman Billy Croker said.

 

    .24  EDITORIAL: Regional water
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal - Tupelo, MS, USA
Regional cooperation with the institute could prove immensely useful in the long term. - Rural water systems - Mississippi has about 1500 of them - face ...

 

    .25  Supervisors delay decision on Ramona wine-tasting region
San Diego Union Tribune - United States
A majority of county supervisors said they liked the idea of developing a wine region locally – and especially the potential revenue and tourism influx that ...

 

    .26  Casper's landfill proves regionally attractive
Jackson Hole Star-Tribune - Casper, WY, USA
"We as a city fully expect to end up with a recommendation to regionalize and close our local landfill in Douglas and transport our waste to a regional ...

 

    .27  County mayor picked to lead regional development board
The Mountain Press - Sevierville, TN, USA
Waters was recently chosen to serve as president of the East Tennessee Economic Development Agency board. The agency works to promote the development of new ...

 

    .28  MC weighs in on Marquette plan
Gary Post Tribune - Gary, IN, USA
... in Chesterton and Michigan City about the Marquette 2 Plan will be presented before the Northwest Indiana Regional Planning Commission in January. ...

 

    .29  Cheap Chips, Counterfeit Wilderness
CounterPunch - Petrolia, CA, USA
Apparently, it is where the next great battle for the future of the Wild Rockies bioregion will be fought. …

 

    .30  Three towns mull regional school district
Boston Globe - United States
A School Regionalization Planning Board is asking community members to weigh in on the prospect of Ayer, Lunenburg, and Shirley forming a regional school ...

 

    .31  Atlanta Regional Commission — Blogs, Pictures, and more on WordPress
Find other items tagged with "atlanta-regional-commission"

 

11. Other in the news: Highlighted words are Google search terms.

    .10  Scientists urge cooperation
Regina Leader-Post - Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
Too often we see our enterprises as divided very much into narrow disciplines -- economics, anthropology, evolutionary biology or ecology -- but these boundaries are artificial. …

 

    .11  Study: Cooperation, Not Competition Key To Fisherman's Success
NBC 11 - San Francisco, CA, USA
They must be in a cooperative fishery, like those operating in New Zealand and Australia. That's where individual fishermen own a share of the total harvest ...

 

    .12  Together WI swims, divided it sinks: Imperative to find a structure for regional governance in the Caribbean
Trinidad & Tobago Express - Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
... or real crisis to the other, the question of what the Technical Working Group calls "Managing Mature Regionalism" keeps being deferred again and again. ...

 

    .13  Judges Support A Pacific Regional Court
pacific - Honolulu, HI, USA
The rise in cross border crime, the need for the development of regional assets such as tuna fish and the small size of many Pacific island populations highlight the need for a collective response to the development of regional legal services.  ...

 

    .14  Auckland Welcomes Economic Development Priorities

Scoop Independent News - NZ
Auckland regional economic development agency AucklandPlus has welcomed the Government's announcement of six future economic development priorities.

 

    .15  Power policy disadvantages region's towns
Central Midlands & Coastal Advocate - Moora, WA, Australia
... which puts businesses in these towns in an unenviable position and effectively disadvantages the town's opportunities of regional development. ...

 

    .16  Europe, Africa look to build new world order
Economic Times - Gurgaon, Haryana, India
"Imagine if we showed that with 1.5 billion people and 80 countries - almost half the UN membership - we can make a real impact, both regionally and as ...

 

    .17  UN Opens Regional Preventive Diplomacy Center In Turkmenistan
RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty - Prague, Czech Republic
The UN says its Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy, which opened on December 10, will seek to assist the governments of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, ...

 

    .18  More Needs To Be Done To Achieve Regionalism-Urwin
Pacific Magazine
Countries in the Pacific region still have a long way to go to achieve “deep-seated” regionalism. Delivering the opening address at the inaugural meeting of the Pacific Governance Network in Sigatoka, Fiji today, Secretary General of the Pacific ...

 

    .19  Stronger regional partnerships must be at heart of EU policy for smes
European Business Guide - Brussels, Belgium
According to a recent press release of the Committee of the Regions (cor): The EU needs to focus much more on regional-level partnerships if it wants to ...

 

    .20  City will have veto in regional decisions
Canada-com - Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Edmonton will get a veto over its neighbours in regional decisions, says a leaked provincial report obtained by The Journal. ...

 

    .21  Wanted: municipal consensus

Edmonton Sun - Alberta, Canada
A recent Innovative Research Group poll shows an overwhelming 82% of Edmonton region residents back the creation of a regional council by the provincial by the provincial government. Of course, a council is easy. What it does is the hard part, …

 

    .22  FESA to probe regional fire hydrant ownership
ABC Regional Online - Australia
The Fire and Emergency Services Authority (FESA) has announced it will conduct a review into the ownership and maintenance of fire hydrants in regional Western Australia....

 

 

12. Blogs: Highlighted words are Google search terms.

    .10  Austin economy still on top
By Capital Area Council of Governments(Capital Area Council of Governments)
"This latest report reaffirms our position as a leading center of innovation and economic competitiveness in the US economy, " says Betty Voights, Executive Director of the Capital Area Council of Governments, which commissions the ...

 

    .11  Belgium shows you don't need a government
By John Redwood
Regionalism in Belgium has been fostered so successfully that the Flemish speaking part of the country now wants nothing to do with the Walloon or French speaking part of the country. The country has quite enough adopted EU law to keep ...

 

    .12 Into Shrinking Cities
By Jim Russell(Jim Russell)
Pittsburgh is a complicated cultural geography, belonging to more than one region (see Appalachian Diaspora) and shares an economic history with cities around the world. Problems in Hartford are not all that different from the issues ...

 

    .13  Greater Richmond: First Create It, Then Save It
By Bert Berlin(Bert Berlin)
Crupi sets out as one of the reasons there is little regional cooperation in the Richmond area, "[t]he inability or unwillingness of metro leaders or citizens to think of themselves as a region." I think that what Dr. ...

 

    .14  Capitalism replicates commodity, not community
By Richard Layman(Richard Layman)
First, they focused on places that provide regionally attractive retail and commercial space. This knocks out many places like Capitol Hill or Cleveland Park because for the most part they are neighborhood serving (I know that Cleveland ...

 

    .15  Comment on Chris Warren in Crain's by Ed Morrison
Most regions measure this component of their planning in months, not years. Leading regions have thrown out the old strategic planning models as too slow. They are gettting real time public engagement in strategy through practices of ...

 

    .16  Cleveland's Role in Regionalism
By cthompson
Chris Warren, the city of Cleveland official in charge of regional development, outlined the city's vision for working with others throughout Northeast Ohio to build a globally competitive regional economy. ...

 

    .17  Privatizing in the Dark: The Pitfalls of Privatization & Why Budget Disclosure is Needed

By John Bacino(Karyn)
In our report, we use the imperfect data available to briefly survey the broad trends in state privatization and highlight the problems many opponents see in that process. The report also uses available multi-state data to note some of ...

 

    .18  Should Nashville be regionalized?
By Nashville_maestro
... those cities lose their charming character that has defined them for years. -If done poorly, it could potentially drive away buisnesses. Cities that have regionalized themselves to much success include Portland (Oregon) and Seattle.

 

    .19  Harrisburg Regional Education Consortium Promoting Advanced Technology Industries Careers
By ben carpano
... Capital Area Biotechnology Partnership, a consortium of regional educational institutions focused on preparing local students for careers in biotechnology and related fields....

 

    .20  New 'Efficiency Regionalization' Strategy in Energy Bill
By Juli(Juli)
A national coalition of distributors and contractors associated with heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigeration (HVACR) today criticized Congress for inserting unprecedented "regionalization" provisions in the Energy Bill that will pit consumers against special-interest environmental groups in Washington, DC. ...

 

    .21  Counties are best placed to deliver devolution
By ourkingdom
Christine Constable (Norwich, ECC): There has been a keen amount of debate on 'regionalism' recently on OurKingdom - some people against the idea full stop, some against it if it would undermine claims to an English parliament, ...

 

    .22  [regions] only within the national whole
By Bretwalda Edwin-Higham(Bretwalda Edwin-Higham)
Regionalism, behind its mask of local democracy, enhanced prosperity for all, but in truth standing for millions more unaccountable gravy-slurping jobsworths, has got to fool enough of the people enough of the time... ...

 

    .23  Mark Lewis Opportunies for biorefining in the North East of England
By Simon Robinson
Work with chemicals and fuel companies as well as farming, food Regional Development Agencies and Universities. They have set up a regional study and are proposing making liquids from biomass bio oil or torrefraction to make a char ...

 

    .24  ASEAN Declaration on Cultural Heritage
By Kamarul Syahril Kamal & Lilawati Ab Wahab(Kamarul Syahril Kamal & Lilawati Ab Wahab)
DETERMINED to achieve substantial progress in the protection and promotion of ASEAN cultural heritage and cultural rights undertakings through an increased and sustained program of regional cooperation and solidarity, ...

 

    .25  Figel: the EU is a 'community of values'
By Cranmer(Cranmer)
"The EU is the only 'geopolitical innovation' based on the respect for cultural diversity in the world, and, as such, is an attractive model to share." Err...the United States of America? Okay, maybe that's pushing the definition of ...

 

    .26  Jewish Autonomous Region
By Daniel Septimus
JTA reports: "Officials in the Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan in Siberia claim to have built the world's largest menorah." Which leads me to report: …  There's something called the "Jewish Autonomous Region of ...

 

    .27  Regions of Italy
By CWG
Italy has 20 regions.  A region in Italy is similar to a state in the United States and it was only in 1948 that the regions were given autonomy as a part of the 1948 constitution. …

 

    .28  The Power of Collaborative Innovation
By Egils Milbergs
The Annual Meeting 2008 program will be based on the following five conceptual pillars:. · Business Competing While Collaborating. · Economics and Finance Addressing Economic Insecurity. · Geopolitics Aligning Interests across Divides ...

 

    .29  Statecraft for transferring business knowledge from Europe to China
By globalhighered
1) Support to Regional Integration, the key dialogue partners for the EU being Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), Association of South-East Asia Nations (ASEAN), ASEAN regional forum (ARF) and South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation ...

 

    .30  Global Change in Mountain Regions
By John Daly(John Daly)
Global Change in Mountain Regions (GLOCHAMORE): A world-wide network to study global change processes in mountains has been in operation since October 2003. It is based on some 25 mountain biosphere reserves in all continents that serve ...

 

    .31  Virginia Technology Alliance Endorses ZeroG, Zero Tax Bill
By JackKennedy(JackKennedy)

The state legislation would exempt state taxation on gross income earned from commercial spaceflight launches from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport and income gained from spaceflight training activies from a Virginia airport or spaceport. …

 

    .32  After 100 yrs of invention of light, some regions are unlit
This image of Earth's city lights was created with data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS). Originally designed to view clouds by moonlight, the OLS is also used to map the ...

 

    .33  Data Governance Framework / Whitepaper
By Michael
The Data Governance Institute has published a Data Governance Framework/Whitepaper here. There is some good information in it, whether you are just staring or have been at it for a long time.

 

    .34  NorCo agrees to join regional health department
By NET(NET)
In a major victory for regional collaboration, the Northampton County Council voted last week to join with Lehigh County in creating a health department serving the entire bi-county area. The ordinance passed by Northampton County ...

 

    .35 Google Turning My Maps Into Social Mapping Platform
Search Engine Land 
Then last month, Google introduced community editing and collaboration for My Maps. And today, Google is introducing comments and ratings for My Maps.

 

13. Announcements and Regional Links

    .10  U.S. Commodity Trade by Geographic Area (1999-2003)

Foreign Trade Highlights - Download all regional tables file containing 20 text files

    .11  Regional Planner - Intergovernmental Review Prj Mgr
Title: Regional Planner - Intergovernmental Review Prj Mgr Description: This positon works within the Program Development and Evaluation Division of the Government and Public Affairs Department.

 

 14. Google News for “Regional Community”

Other menu sections available from this link include: regions, regional, regional community, region, Regional Council, regional development and other search terms. They can be sorted by date or relevance. These are among the 50 search terms I use to produce this newsletter.