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MAY 2003
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Publications and Media
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REVIEW: Exploring Ad Hoc Regionalism
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By Douglas R. Porter and Allan D. Wallis, Lincoln Institute, 2002, 38 pages ($14).
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 In April of 2001, the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy convened a discussion group of 23 observers and practitioners of cross-sector, collaborative approaches to regional problem solving. The forum was organized to learn more about how regional governance is achieved where no single, formal institution exists to organize and carry out responses to such regional problems as sprawl, environmental degradation, social and fiscal disparity, and economic development, among others. The proceedings were distilled, summarized and packaged with illustrative case studies by Douglas Porter and Allan Wallis as Exploring Ad Hoc Regionalism, a brief but informative examination of recent efforts both inventive and improvisational to address specific regional issues in ways that circumvent traditional bureaucracies and hierarchies.
Porter, President of the Growth Management Institute, Chevy Chase, Md., and Wallis, an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Graduate School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado-Denver, characterize the regional efforts they profile in the publication as amorphous . . . governance experiments that involve interest groups from multiple sectors public, private and nonprofit operating in loose-knit, collaborative relations, although frequently convened and supported by such traditional entities as regional planning councils or metropolitan planning organizations.
The authors analysis of ad hoc regionalism (ad hoc meaning to that, or more figuratively, for this or that particular purpose) introduces six developmental stages or sets of issues that efforts at collaborative regionalism either must pass through or confront. The first (and most elemental) is, of course, defining the region of interest, which may be based on a sense of place, the nature of the problem at hand, or a complex interaction of interests and concerns with differing (albeit cross-jurisdictional) boundaries. Next, ad hoc regionalists must understand the driving forces that instigate them to act at a regional level. These may include an acute crisis, the perception of a looming threat, or the emergence of a strategic opportunity. Third, regions contemplating collaborative work must identify and inventory their problem-solving capacitiesleadership, institutional, fiscal, technical, and civic. The fourth step is to identify what Porter and Wallis call strategic handles for action, or the specific approach to addressing the problem in light of available regional capacities. The fifth and six steps sustaining action and sustaining organization seem like variants of a single stage, namely institutionalization. The authors distinction is that action initiated in response to a crisis may evolve into collaborative, proactive planning (sustaining action), and that regional mobilization by a coalition for a given purpose may be enhanced through the establishment of a permanent nonprofit agency (sustaining organization).
The concluding chapter, Putting it All Together, draws this distinction between regional action and regional organization more clearly by describing how the six steps of ad hoc regionalism relate to the processes of generating awareness, project initiation and sustaining action (or institutionalization). This section includes a matrix that neatly maps the relationship between levels and stages of development for regional actions and organizations. It should be noted, however, that the case studies selected for inclusion in the publication, while informative and interesting for the range and types of regional activity they portray, do not directly or clearly demonstrate the six-step process that forms the organizational framework of Exploring Ad Hoc Regionalism.
In the chapter titled Sustaining Action and Organization, Porter and Wallis appropriately acknowledge a tension that apparently developed during the Lincoln Institute forum over the use of the very term ad hoc. Some forum participants objected to the term on the basis that it suggests action that is spontaneous and incapable of either sustaining itself or implanting new methods and processes (i.e., decision-making mechanisms and problem-solving techniques) in existing institutions. Others found the temporary and topical connotation of ad hoc uniquely appealing, preferring to judge regional efforts on the basis of effectiveness rather than permanence or survival.
Exploring Ad Hoc Regionalism is notable and valuable for its attempt to extract commonalities from the diverse organizational experiences of numerous regional problem-solving initiatives and agencies (in fact, the appendix consists of a matrix profiling 18 regional efforts/organizations in 14 states). An interesting exercise for stewards of place will be to assess the extent to which the regionalism presented by Porter and Wallis represents reactive regional response or adaptive evolution of regional governance.
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