The federal government should provide incentives for collaboration and use more flexible and regional approaches to align its information and its investments. These incentives could include financing for metropolitan collaborative pilot projects, as well as promoting innovative strategies for regional land use planning. The federal government should work with localities to determine how best to coordinate its vast array of information, technical assistance, and funding to meet local and regional goals.

HUD, in conjunction with other federal agencies, should be given the authority and resources to provide new flexible funding to multi-jurisdictional, multi-sectoral partnerships to use in designing and implementing regional approaches to community, economic, and affordable housing development. Funding would be provided to cooperative partnerships of government, business, community, and institutional representatives from multiple jurisdictions within a region that can and have agreed to take quick action in adopting regional approaches. The funding should (1) overcome the hesitancy of localities to sacrifice their limited, piecemeal resources to inter-jurisdictional work; (2) enable cities and counties to respond to their sustainable development needs in the manner they see best; (3) enable regional partnerships to secure the capacity with staff, technology, technical assistance, and more needed to accelerate concrete collaborations; (4) partially cover the costs of implementing regional initiatives; and (5) create lessons that can be shared with other regions facing similar challenges, such as in providing affordable housing. This initiative would make a solid statement to the nation that the federal government views bottom-up, cooperative, inter-jurisdictional, and inter-sectoral partnerships as a critical tool for addressing existing development and embracing the sustainable development opportunities of the next millennium.

State, local government, and regional organizations should support the use of indicators to show interdependence of jurisdictions within regions. The National Association of Regional Councils, for example, is currently developing a State of the Regions Report to help benchmark the performance of regions on a number of economic, environmental, and social factors. In metropolitan areas such as Baltimore, Cleveland, Portland, Seattle, and Chattanooga, local civic, business, and community groups have compiled indicators that show the interrelationships of regional concerns and the effectiveness of regional cooperation.