Message from the Chairman

This commences the Division's new web site under the present slate of officers. That includes myself as Chair, Tom Dow as Vice Chair for State Programs and as Treasurer, and Rocky Piro as Vice Chair for Local and Regional Programs and as Secretary. Tom is with the Kansas State Department of Transportation and Rocky is with the Puget Sound Regional Council. Our newsletter editor is Scott Taylor with the Missouri State Department of Transportation. Our web master is Ryan Harris with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

Our web site and newsletter are a means of reaching out to those engaged in urban and regional planning where it cuts across more than one governmental jurisdiction. Certainly this includes areawide planning and development, whether at the metropolitan or nonmetropolitan level. And it also includes reciprocal relations between state and local governments and areawide agencies. For example, our March 2003 newsletter contained a lead article on the early 2003 consolidation of the City of Louisville and the surrounding Jefferson County. This article also discussed the prior urban and regional planning activities that helped to provide a foundation for this city, county consolidation. This same newsletter also contained an article on the intergovernmental relations efforts involved in the development of the Puget Sound Regional Council's Destination 2030, the long-range, intergovernmental transportation plan for the Puget Sound area. This transportation plan won the American Planning Association's 2003 Outstanding Planning Award for a Plan, as awarded at the APA National Conference in Denver in early April.

The above give examples of the direction in which we are moving. We welcome and solicit items of interest on intergovernmental stories and events involving urban and regional planning and development. Eventually, we would hope that our web site and newsletter will serve as a leading exchange of information for this particular type of planning. So we would like to hear from you. What is happening in your part of the country in terms of urban and regional planning and development, from the Intergovernmental Perspective?

Lee Schoenecker