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Reflections on
Regionalism
Bruce
Katz, Editor
The recent Brookings
book Reflections on Regionalism is an excellent
collection of essays by leading thinkers on regions.
It provides a useful baseline on the state of regionalism
in the United States today and offers helpful lessons
learned. I highly recommend it.
However, there is
a probunctions, create regional government, and
regional issues will be addressed. Combined
with strong federal government support, this approach
becomes top down. The approach suggests that
we know what the problems are: sprawl, inequality,
unequal tax base; all we need is a government-mandated
solution to fix them.
An alternative approach
would start with regional business, government and
civic leadership, define common regional goals and
create bottom up strategies to meet the varied
needs of different regions. Clearly, this
is a much more messy approach with
lem. It fails to
make clear the assumptions about regions and the
role of government in regional planning. Most of
the articles assume that comprehensive regional
planning led by government is a good thing and we
simply need more of it. I would call this a structural
approach — consolidate regional f
no structural answer like regional government. But
this alternative approach is based more on the principles
of the New Economy. It’s entrepreneurial, decentralized
and networked. It does not assume we have all the
information we need about the problem. Instead,
it addresses problems through experimenting with
different solutions and learning what works.
This approach is about regional leaders coming together
out of common interest to address regional problems
through collaboration. The federal role is less
clear in this model; it becomes more of a partner
than a driver. The bottom up approach requires a
faith in civic entrepreneurship and regional stewardship
in short, a belief in civic activism.
Maybe we need a period
of experimentation with different models regional
government, regional stewardship and many other
models. Not every region needs to move toward a
Portland or Minneapolis model and not every region
needs to become Silicon Valley or Austin. We may
need a period of time for trying out lots of approaches
that combine different elements of top down authority
and bottom up entrepreneurship.
Unfortunately, this
book assumes that there is a model of regional planning
that we have failed to live up to, but should continue
to move toward. Instead, we need to be open to a
variety of models that will work for different regions.
In short, we need to follow Aristotle rather than
Plato: we need more practical examples of what works
rather than ideals of what ought to work.
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Last updated September
16, 2000
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