Can one say — and get away — with the “R” word? Lightheartedly, Edsel Ford, civic leader and board member of the Ford Motor Corporation, asked an audience at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference if they’d tolerate it. The audience chuckled in appreciation, reports the Detroit Free-Press. Ford was describing the new DesignRegionalDetroit civic process he leads and introducing a talk on regional strategies by Citistates Group leader Neal Peirce.
Detroit, a region long plagued by bitter city-suburban conflicts overlaid by racial differences, has been the last of all major American regions to start a serious debate on regional collaboration. But now it seems more ready than ever. A concluding session of the early June Mackinac conference included a cordial joint session of the region’s so-called Big Four — Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, the Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, and Nancy White, chairwoman of the Macomb County Board of Commissioners. The session was even international, including Mayor Eddie Francis of just-across-the-river-Windsor, Ontario. The Big Four commissioned a veteran Michigan politico, John Hertel, to service as a consultant and de facto lobbyist in building the regional transportation authority and system the region so glaringly absent up to now.