We know in the northeast that regionalism is sometimes fleeting, and some cities and towns embrace it better than others. We also know that economies do not fit neatly in a single municipal boundary, and people, money and infrastructures cross within more regional boundaries. However, in the home rule arena, there are inefficiencies in our system, and in comparison to other areas (governance per square mile) perhaps our resources (people and moneY) could be better utilized if more effectively distributed across the larger region.
In an effort to streamline city/province/country/EU and the layers of bureaucracy (and cost) that goes with that, Italy has started restructuring its governance to better suit the regions, recognizing that there is in fact a hub to this activity, the core primary city. This seems to recognize the stark cultural differences across the nation, and a nod to previous city-state structure of Italy’s principalities. It seems that by integrating into the EU, Italy has been able to re-recognize it’s differentiated metro identities–built around the identity of the urban hub upon which cultural and business identities are built.
Additionally, this movement recognizes the political and economic engine of the central hub of a regional economy, and that additional governmental boundaries create inefficiencies and frictions in the economy that should be eliminated. This article points out that they may have not yet figured out how to figure out how taxes might be reflowing and distributing, and the regional populace has no say in who might become the leader (only the principal hub city does) —which does not seem to work in concert with this newfound regional perspective.
However it’s a movement worth watching, and perhaps a lesson to take in about using cost/efficiency as a way to consider regionalism, and then how you might start to look at where things can cross borders easily (public works?), and then how money might be collected in taxes, and then distributed more equitably to activities and projects that support regionalism and reduce inefficiencies.
Future thinking–Increasingly people are traveling and connecting even more afield from regional hubs, and home and work regions may be in non-proximate locales. This further complicates the ability to look at shared services and needs across populations, but in this day and age of technology, perhaps we have a better way of tracking people’s contributions to and uses of municipal services. Maybe tax dollars should follow people’s impact, and not just live within the boundaries of where they call home (which is increasingly harder for some to do–claim a single home!).