Regional Compact for Sustainable Economic Development

The Bay Area Council has been working for sometime to develop a compact among San Francisco Bay area communities to encourage sustainable economic development. Download the draft report here. Lots of good ideas in it.

Some of the ideas in the compact need to be adapted to smaller metro areas and regions. Getting communities in a region to agree to move the same overall direction is the starting point. Getting them to actually do it is another.

One thing that I've learned in working with communities is that the top-down (region to community) approach to regional collaboration does not work unless there is a major crisis to drive it. In most cases, a bottom-up approach (community to the region) approach is more practical and more likely to get support. Think ground swell when you think regional collaboration. Build a region of vital communities! That is a sensible approach to regionalism for economic development.