One Long Island Project: Dynamic, Collaborative and Sustainable Regionalism

First a word about the posts and ideas on the Long Island Idea Factory site.

While we are primarily concerned with our home region of Long Island, we believe that many of the ideas we are proposing would work in other regions of New York State and elsewhere as well.

After all, why couldn't there be a One New York Project, a New York 3.0, a New York Meta Think Tank, a New York Virtual Congress, a Virtual New York Constitution, a New York School of Meta Interdisciplinary Studies and so on? We're only limited by our imagination and willingness to work collaboratively for what we wish to see accomplished.

So rather than ask the question why should we collaborate, we should be asking the question why wouldn't we collaborate? We should understand by now that Long Island and New York are competing nationally and internationally. Innovation and collaboration are key to our success.

We can't really afford to engage in the old "upstate - downstate" rivalries any longer and be expected to taken seriously as an economic and innovation powerhouse in the future. This "old thinking" will eventually diminish or destroy any advantages we currently enjoy.

Change is undeniably difficult. And large scale change even more so. Long Island's (and New York's) current method of a "non-integrated" approach to issue resolution has clearly not been a success on many levels. Future demands will be exponentially larger and more complex than they are today. We must have an approach and a methodology for successfully navigating these future storms. "One Long Island" is a potential solution.

Even after we "resolve" an issue, the resolution must be "recycled" to ensure its continued viability under changing circumstances and fact patterns. When we speak about a "perpetual" and "dynamic" Long Island this is one of the main concepts we are advancing.