Sunday, February 10, 2013

Bay Area regional planning conference, shared resource future


The Daily Journal (San Mateo County), Associated Press/Martha Mendoza, 2/9/13.  

"Hundreds of business and political leaders gathered in San Jose to consider the advantages of merging the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley into a single region, sharing everything from city dumps to water treatment plants as communities sprawl across borders.

Our 9 regional counties
Leaders attending the State of the Valley conference Friday (2/8/13) noted that Bay Area residents, businesses and local governments face the same challenges, from gridlock and earthquakes to steep housing prices and climate change. They said the region, which amounts to the world’s 13th-largest economy, should continue to boom if they coordinate their planning and consider merging transit systems, police and fire services and even city governments.  ....“Powerful regions are the new basic unit of governments in the 21st century,” said Saffo, pointing to Singapore and Hong Kong. “City states are the powerful nexus of power, commerce, culture and identity.”

Stretching from the rolling vineyards in north Sonoma County to the sprawling estates of southern Santa Clara County, the Bay Area has 6.9 million residents living in 101 cities, centered in the tech-rich Silicon Valley and San Francisco. ... He said the Bay Area should look to examples like Washington, D.C., for inspiration on putting jobs near transit. And he said Portland and Minneapolis have managed to coordinate neighboring governments and services."  Read more.

Reference Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), 9 Bay Area Counties:  Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma.  ABAG Home page and news.

Posted by Kathy Meeh

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh cool. pacifica is very ready to be absorbed. it'll be sort of like soaking up a nasty spill. do it right and there's no trace left.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to see a war lord system
develop in CA. It could work. Start that political and socio-economic evolution all over again. See where we end up. Maybe we can finally lose the nimby-nobie-hippie scourge.

Anonymous said...

Wow. More crazy, stupid ideas from the communists in california.

Anonymous said...

While I think that merging the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley into a single region would surely mean that Pacifica would get the short end of the stick (read: screwed) and I'm no fan of the Association of Bay Area Governments, I also think that anyone who attributes these "crazy, stupid ideas" to "the communists" is identifying themselves as both crazy and stupid.

Anonymous said...

Pacifica is already screwed. We should be so lucky as to become part of something that works better.

Anonymous said...

War lords. There coming back.

Anonymous said...

Open your eyes and read Anon 5:08, communists are no longer hiding. Read the names and look them up. Wow. So naive.

Anonymous said...

Anon 11:35 - talk about naive. You don't even know what a communist is. Look it up. It has to do with the elimination of private property and all goods being owned in common. There's also something about the workers owning the means of production. When you call everybody you don't agree with communists, you just make a fool of yourself.

Kathy Meeh said...

"..communists are no longer hiding.." Anonymous, 11:35 AM

Oh please, do define "communists" from your view. I can hardly wait for that one.

Then explain your alternative to shared service efficiency, and moving population and business growth around the Bay Area. (These are real issues, the result of society and capital growth. And the studies exist from other regional examples.)

Oh I know you think the entire USA only has 300,000 people (same as 250 years ago), everyone for themselves, life in the metropolitan bay area is "rural", and chaos is "freedom". Working against your own best interest and that of others is possibly less like "naive" (your word) or denial, and more like nihilism.

Anonymous said...

oh please kathy, must you use another word that dope won't understand?

Anonymous said...

Communism was an economic policy:

Read and learn.

http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/59/lenins-new-economic-policy-what-it-was-and-how-it-changed-the-soviet-union

Kathy Meeh said...

"Communism was an economic policy" Anonymous 1:33 PM

So. Key word "was", in Russia 90 years ago. What does that have to do with regional traffic congestion planning in the San Francisco Bay Area today???