1. Shenandoah Valley/Mid-Atlantic Pilot Project - Update The Sub-State District/Regional Council as a Geospatial Unit of Analytical Geography for the United States
Tom Christoffel, AICP
Regional Intelligence – Regional Communities
Collaborative Expedition Workshop #51
“I see regions.”
June 20, 2006

4. Shenandoah Valley/Mid-Atlantic Pilot
Proposed – February 21, th Expedition
March – 2006 – Brand Niemann has a Wiki up
Goal – align data to “regional council” regions in support of data integration from EPA regions to localities though these regions.
Related work – NICS
Quick review of the geography

5. American Regions Globally the U.S. state is a semi-autonomous region.
The “county” or a variant was the common state district or the first region since colonial times.
Most states have a system of multi-county “regional councils” like the Virginia Planning District Commissions. The PDC is a political subdivision.
There are also multi-state regions like Wash COG which utilize state compacts to coordinate across state lines as a region of regions.
The County is a stable geographic unit to which Census data is coded.
They can build to Regional Council boundaries.

6. Census Data – Geographic Scales – States to big for regional analysis
                                                                                             
Population range – California 34 million to Wyoming .5 million.
Land area range – 664,000 square miles – Alaska to 1,545 square miles RI

7. 3,034 - Counties - the original substate district & basic Census FIPS coded unit - too small for regional analysis Note: 35,937 sub-county governments - 19,431 municipal & 16,506 township
Counties – 3,034 and within them 35,937 subcounty governments – 19,431 municipal governments and 16,506 township governments. There are also 13,522 school district governments and 35,356 special district governments. Total 87,9000 government units – including 50 state and 1 Federal unit.

8. Most analysis focuses on the Metropolitan Areas - MSAs

9. A look at Nonmetro Counties shows how much territory is left out.

10. Opportunity to Use the Substate District/ Regional Council Network - NARC
Regional councils exist in virtually every state, providing a way to simplify geographic organization.

11. 1968 -Virginia Planning District Regions
                                                                                             

12. Data sets State/County/City/MSA – lots of programmatic regions – alignment to regions difficult now.
Watershed data
Traffic statistics
Education data
Employment data
Social Services
Health statistics
Jurisdictions want to know what is going on with their neighbors and peers? How do they compare.

13. Map is geographic, but …

14. FIPS codes are alphabetic:
01 – Alabama
02 – Alaska
04 – Arizona
05 – Arkansas
Same issue for Counties – Alpha FIPS

15. Lets take a look at Mid-Atlantic for regions.

17. The regions I see:
Wash COG & MSAs

18. Problems and solution
The alphabetic FIPS data sets work against compilation to this region.
Commercial GIS too robust.
Region-building information approach needed.
An information systems approach that used a geographic region code rather than alphabetic FIPS code would aggregate data – Federal, State, local – both public and private where available.
The Shenandoah Valley – and the Mid-Atlantic U.S. are regions to pilot this concept in LandVIEW 6, which contains Census and EPA data.

19. Importance?
Leaders of organizations, public and private, are continually challenged to frame their markets and locate appropriate data to support their planning and management activities.
Federal and State agencies are the most common source of public data.
Data work is costly.
Regional alignments are invisible.
Regional Councils are units where regional intelligence is gathered, maintained for regional community.
Alignment of data to regions supports their DNA

20. VirginiaView & West VirginiaView Remote Sensing – Regions Could Help Interpretation

21. Regional Intelligence – Regional Communities - Regional Commission
Tom Christoffel, AICP, Editor
Regional Community Development News
P.O. Box 1444
Front Royal Virginia (VA)
Phone:
Website:
- or -
Tom Christoffel, AICP, Senior Planner
Northern Shenandoah Valley Regional Commission
103 E. Sixth Street - Front Royal, VA 22630
Web:
Phone: x 209
The “Regions Work” Initiative © 1998