Comments appreciated on this concept!

Sadly, Northeast Ohio has no regional vision for how to live sustainably on the land. Our fragmented structure of local governments — all with their own, individual control of land use and their own, unrelenting need to grow their tax base — makes regional cooperation and planning extremely difficult.

However, public interest in a regional planning process seems to be growing. Indeed, the top ranked goal at the Voices & Choices Town Meeting of September 2006 was: “Plan for the future development and growth of the region.”

People are asking: How can we come together and talk about where it's best to develop land and where it's best to conserve land? How can we talk about issues of equity and the fiscal disparities between rich and poor communities? And how can we do this on a regional scale, the only geography that matters?

Elements of a regional plan

If we were to embark on a regional plan, it should address at least the following areas:

• Conservation strategy — Start with protection of life-sustaining natural systems, water quality, and biological diversity. We need good science to understand how to do this, and we need an extensive civic discussion about conservation goals. And we will need to make greater investments to protect the most critical areas before it's too late. The convening group for this could be the Lake Erie Allegheny Partnership for Biodiversity, a regional collaboration of conservation organizations, which is already embarking on a regional plan for biodiversity.
• Development/redevelopment strategy — To balance conservation, we need to develop a regional consensus about the best places for development. In a slowly growing region, we need to focus our development efforts where they add the most value, often by redeveloping existing communities (otherwise new development will simply force the abandonment of old). This strategy must include the best places for residential, commercial, and industrial development. And it must include sufficient incentives and policies to influence the real estate market — so that developers can find profitable opportunities in good locations. The convening group for this development strategy could be Team NEO, the regional business organization, which markets land for development.
• Transportation strategy — Transportation investments, which are the largest flow of capital dollars flowing into most communities, must serve the other strategies, otherwise they will be undermined. We need transportation planning to support our vision for a better future, not just follow current trends of sprawl and increasing automobile use. For example, we might have a goal to double the number of people living in downtown Cleveland, and the transportation strategy could explain how to use transportation funding to help produce this desired future. To do this, the region’s metropolitan planning organizations (NOACA, AMATS, SCATS, and ECOG) could come together to develop a unified plan for investing transportation dollars to support the other strategies.
• Farmland protection strategy — Farming is a major industry, and prime farmland should be considered a strategic asset. Our region's development strategy, therefore, should include farmland as an essential component. The convening group for this could be the Cuyahoga Valley Countryside Conservancy, which is leading regional efforts for farmland preservation and the development of a regional food system.
• Regional affordable housing strategy — Exclusionary zoning in newer suburbs forces a handful of the region's communities to shoulder the burden of providing housing for the poor and people of modest means. This isn't fair, and it contributes to decline and disinvestment in older communities. A "fair-share" system to distribute affordable housing, if applied region-wide, would assure that no single community is disproportionately poor. And it would help link low-income households to better jobs, schools, and the other opportunities of American society.
• Regional tax-base sharing strategy — If the benefits of growth were more equitably shared by communities throughout the region, there would be less cut-throat competition for jobs and tax base. We could focus on growing together — in the best places — rather than competing in a ruinous zero-sum game. Tax-base sharing would also compensate communities that agree to forgo growth in favor of conservation.

Process for plan development

No one represents “the region” and has authority to call for a regional plan. So the planning effort will have to be voluntary, collaborative, and open. Here is a possible process:

• The Fund for Our Economic Future (which created Voices & Choices) agrees to fund a two-year project to staff the development of the strategies listed above.
• The Fund and/or political leaders in the region appoint a Steering Committee to oversee the project as a whole.
• An existing organization is named to convene the planning process for each of the strategies. Each organization gets staff and project funding to support its role.
• Each convener assembles a diverse work team to develop the strategy, including priorities, implementation steps, and who is responsible for action. The conveners are also responsible for public involvement. (A model for this is the 208 Plan task force assembled by NOACA and NEFCO to do the regional water quality plan. This effort mobilized a great deal of volunteer participation by experts in the region.)
• The Steering Committee and its staff are responsible for assuring coordination of the strategies (so they all work together), communication of the process, and tracking progress and accountability.
• The Fund supports implementation steps, which may require advocacy and ballot issues.

The product would be a clear set of development priorities for the region — priorities that would have public support. People would understand the trade-offs between developing one place over another. They would understand the need to make hard choices to strengthen the entire region.