Community leaders and citizens are now realizing that regional human settlements are living organisms.  

More urban ones have vital organs—downtown business and cultural districts, suburban employment centers and shopping malls, residential neighborhoods and recreational areas, tied together by the sinews of transportation and the arteries of commerce, and, it is hoped, wrapped in a skin of community.  More rural ones tie together smaller settlements in close proximity that are evolving along similar paths.  

Unlike national, state and local governments, whose boundaries are often the product of political compromises insensitive to their changing populations, regional boundaries follow the evolution of their organic settlements.

Regional vary in size from a handful of neighboring communities to metropolitan conglomerations of cities and counties. They are big enough to provide the components critical to economic competitiveness and the amenities required for quality of life, yet small enough to work together to address the thorniest common challenges.