Building One
Community

Regional Forum: The Public Deficit Crisis

Public Opinion Survey

 Download the MAC brochure:

Building One Community: It’s In
Our Best Interest

Building One Community

MAC is stimulating a better understanding of the interdependence of all communities within Greater Detroit as well as the need for regional cooperation through its Building One Community Initiative.

What is regional cooperation?
Regional cooperation is businesses, communities, and citizens effectively working together to enhance public services, attract high paying jobs and industry, and improve the standard of living and quality of life of residents throughout the entire metropolitan area.

Why care about regional cooperation?
Because it's in our best interest. Metropolitan Detroit is comprised of a great number and variety of political jurisdictions – cities, villages, townships, and counties. While an individual, business or organization may call one particular community “home”, many economic, social, and environmental factors also connect them with, and make them part of, the broader regional community:

• People frequently travel to other communities to work, attend school, shop, visit family and friends, enjoy special events, or seek medical treatment.
  
  
• Rivers and streams flow through many communities, which means that upstream activities and uses affect downstream water quality.
  
  
• Freeways, highways, and public transportation allow people and goods to move through the region and are planned for on an area-wide basis.
  
  
• Water supply and sewerage treatment systems traverse the region providing essential public services.
  
  
• Walkers, runners, and bikers exercise and recreate on greenway trails linking dozens of communities.
  
  
• Sports teams including – the Red Wings, Pistons, Tigers, and Lions – draw patrons from throughout the metropolitan area.
  
  
• Metroparks provide the setting and facilities for family gatherings, boating, roller blading, horseback riding, golf and many other activities for area residents.
  
  

Regional cooperation is also important because regions are the economic engines of the increasingly competitive global economy:

• Entire metropolitan areas, rather than individual communities, are in competition with other regions throughout the nation and world for businesses and good jobs. The ultimate competitiveness and success of a region – and the economic welfare of its individual communities – depends on how well those jurisdictions cooperate as one community.
  
  
• Business draws its labor from a regional pool, operates basic functions on a metropolitan basis, and evaluates an entire area’s infrastructure, work force talent, cultural institutions, environmental conditions, and quality of life amenities when making decisions to locate or expand.
  
  
• Many of Southeast Michigan’s young people are being educated in our fine universities and community colleges only to leave for more attractive regions in which to live, work, and raise a family. Young, mobile, “information age” professionals are especially making these quality of life judgments and are being enticed to metropolitan areas that have cooperated regionally to offer amenities that create a vibrant, exciting, urban experience
  

To learn more about regional cooperation, view Building One Community: It’s In Our Best Interest. This brochure overviews the Southeast Michigan regional community, discusses the value of regional cooperation, and how residents can support communities working together to enhance public services, attract business, and improve quality of life.

If you wish to obtain a hard copy, please contact MAC at 313.961.2270 or mac@mac-web.org