ABSTRACT
State and federal governments can improve the decision-making process and promote long-term, holistic solutions to regional problems by creating incentives to encourage communities to work together. Building stronger links among people, communities, and the decisions that affect them can revitalize grassroots democracy and thereby strengthen communities, regions, and the nation. The 1996 report of the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD), cited above, calls on the government to empower and encourage local communities to work together and, essentially, figure out by themselves how to solve the many problems that spill over from one locality to the next. Regional collaboration has extrinsic value when it allows us to better understand that which we are trying to change or protect and compels us to act accordingly, but it has extrinsic disvalue when it promotes complacency and/or serves as a way to avoid conflict. Albeit, the measure of bottom-up collaboration used is rudimentary and could no doubt be refined.
