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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Institute for Local Self-Reliance Offers Smart Alternatives for Development |
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by Mike Lehman
Email: home_town_advantage-subscribe (nospam) topica.com (unverified!) |
07 Mar 2001
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The ILSR and the New Rules website are helpful resources for all those seeking to develop their communities in ways that are sustainable, democratic, and based on the greatest good for all residents. This is a real contrast to the way communities in Champaign County currently handle development. Here the only important issues are how much money can we hand to developers with no strings attached and how big the headlines will be for the politician handing the public's wallet over to the private sector. |
The ILSR puts out out The Home Town Advantage Bulletin by e-mail. You can subscribe by sending a blank e-mail to the e-mail link above.
They support such efforts as the Living Wage, fighting sprawl and ensuring that government serves all people, with a special empahsis in those left behind by our economy. They emphasize public/private efforts that build what they call the New Localism.
The ILSR website has many links and a great deal of info that especially applies to the circumstances we find ourselves in within Champaign County.
From the ILSR website:
Why NEW RULES?
Because the old ones don\'t work any
longer. They undermine local economies, subvert
democracy, weaken our sense of community, and
ignore the costs of our decisions on the next
generation.
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR)
proposes a set of new rules that builds community
by supporting humanly scaled politics and
economics. The rules call for:
Decisions made by those who will feel the
impact of those decisions.
Communities accepting responsibility for the
welfare of their members and for the next
generation.
Households and communities possessing or
owning sufficient productive capacity to
generate real wealth.
These are the principles of \"new localism.\" They
call upon us to begin viewing our communities and
our regions not only as places of residence,
recreation and retail but as places that nurture
active and informed citizens with the skills and
productive capacity to generate real wealth and the
authority to govern their own lives. (Click here for
the answers to frequently asked questions about
new localism.)
All human societies are governed by rules. We
make the rules and the rules make us. Thus, the
heart of this web site is a growing storehouse of
community and local economy-building rules--laws,
regulations, ordinances, statutes--because these are
the concrete expression of our values. They channel
entrepreneurial energy and investment capital and
scientific genius. The New Rules Project identifies
rules that honor a sense of place and prize
rootedness, continuity and stability as well as
innovation and enterprise.
Click on any of the sectors listed and you will be
taken to a web page that contains a list of
categories of policy tools appropriate for that
sector.
SECTORS
Agriculuture
Agriculture is the foundation of all sustainable wealth.
Even today, when agriculture plays a diminishing role, the
productivity of the soil and the health of farmers are still a
fundamental concern. This section of the New Rules
offers information on agricultural policies and a library of
local, state, national and international rules that nurture
vibrant and diversified rural communities.
Electricity
Electricity is the motor force of industrial economies, both
literally and figuratively. Almost half of all energy
harnessed today is used to generate electricity. In
virtually every state and many city halls and in the U.S.
Congress, policy makers are involved in changing the
rules for the next electrical system. This section identifies
those rules that best foster the authority, responsibility
and capacity of communities.
Environment
Without responsibility, authority will be exercised in
shortsighted ways. This section of the web site identifies
rules that encourage communities to adopt a longer
perspective and embrace policies that are respnsible to
the next generation. The most enduring way to reduce
pollution is to extract the maximum value from local
resources. The higher the efficiency, the lower the waste,
the lower the pollution.
Equity
This section identifies rules that encourage communities
to accept responsibility in two areas: towards their own
less fortunate members and less fortunate members in
other communities, and towards members of the next
generation. Topics include education, health care and
living wage.
Finance
The delinking of money from place and productive
investment is not the inevitable result of technological
advances or economic evolution. Money is a human
invention and the rules that control its dynamic are also a
human invention. The rules we have fashioned favor
mobility over community, speculation over productive
investment, volatility over permanence. This section
contains rules that reconnect capital and community, with
a special emphasis on those parts of the community that
traditionally have been left behind.
Governance
Governance works best when those who feel the impact of
the decisions are those involved in making the decisions.
That principle works as well in the private sector as the
public sector. This section of the web site focuses largely
on process. It examines the mechanisms and rules that
encourage the most democratic and socially responsible
kinds of decisionmaking.
Information
Information economies are inherently global in reach. Yet
the information economy also holds great promise for
dramatically decentralizing the production and
dissemination of information in all its forms (e.g. print,
video, radio, online). This section explores policies that
cities, states, nations, and international bodies are
developing to encourage a sense of place and individual
autonomy and security in an age of global information
systems.
Retail
Retail is where business meets household, where
enterprise meets community, where the value-added of the
extraction, processing, manufacturing, wholesaling and
distribution chain culiminates with sales to the final
customer. Retail is the sector most closely tied to our
sense of community. This section offers an array of policy
tools that communities are using to foster local ownership
of retail and a more intimate link between commerce and
place.
Sports
Sports, unlike any other business, generates a sense of
civic pride and community identity. At the amateur level,
organized sports, especially with the advent of girls\'
sports leagues, involves more active and ongoing citizen
involvement than virtually any other activity, including
politics and religion. This section identifies rules, and
models, of organized and professional sports that allow us
not only to root for the home team to win, but to root the
home team in place.
Taxation
Taxation is the most visible and perhaps the most
important issue to voters and policymakers around the
world. In this section we will be gathering the tax rules
from across all sectors and presenting them here.
Taxation, often criticized as excessive government, can be
an important policy tool to meet community goals. Taxes
can be used to level the playing field, to limit size or
sprawl, to protect the environment, and to encourage local
ownership and production.
Copyright 2000 - Institute for Local Self-Reliance
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See also:
http://www.newrules.org/index.htm
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