Selling a Region

For years, development leaders, politicians and others have been talking about sparking more economic cooperation between Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and nearby communities.

There have been some successes, and moments of collaboration. But cohesive, effective and lasting regional cooperation has been elusive. The Corridor Business Alliance, made up of 12 development, business and educational institutions from both ends of the I-380 corridor, is making another push. We hope, this time, regionalism succeeds.

Much has been made lately of the alliance's effort to “brand” the region with a new name and a new logo. Goodbye “Technology Corridor,” hello something else.

But if we get lost in the label debate, we might miss what's really going on. And that's an effort to fundamentally change the way our citizens, businesses owners and leaders think about where we live and how we're economically connected. And changed thinking could have big benefits.

The old development model, where towns and cities scramble over one another to chase jobs, business prospects and government projects, wastes critical, scarce resources. That's particularly true in the rural Midwest, where development efforts often are a tougher sell. There's plenty of evidence in cities and on main streets that the old strategy isn't working.

Instead of competing, a regional approach calls for cooperation between communities that already share important resources - natural, economic, work force, educational and others. The economy is less and less constrained by political boundaries. The federal government already gives preference for funding to regional projects.

Finding out how shared resources link corridor communities is a major goal of the branding process, which, beyond a name and logos, also will provide piles of research on our region.

Understanding how the region's parts work together will feed another major goal of the alliance: to develop a regional economic development strategy to lure new business and help existing firms. That strategy promises to be the alliance's biggest accomplishment.

But like past efforts, none of this will mean much unless local officials, development leaders and residents buy into the notion of a region where turf is yielded and resources are shared. The alliance understands this, and has made gaining that buy-in the core component of its effort.

The key, alliance members contend, is to convince us that building a winning region doesn't mean that individual communities lose. Old thinking dies hard. It's tough to sell the notion that a new plant picking Hiawatha is not a loss for Coralville.

If competition truly yields to cooperation, you can name the region whatever you want. But the alliance's effort will be called a success.