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FUTURE STUDIES
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Focusing on the Region
If the focus on neighborhood associations can be seen as an intra-community direction, the focus on adjacent communities should be seen as an inter-community direction. In a cross-sectional and longitudinal panel study of communities in the Northeastern United States, Humphrey (2001, p. 99) found “that growth machine activities are intensifying and may be exacerbating social inequality between places.”A non-trivial number of elites concern themselves with regional economic development, political, and infrastructural linkages with neighboring municipalities. As one insurance banker commented, elites across cities in the state need to begin thinking about the state and its cities as being one unit which is in competition with other states and countries for economic development.
To further illustrate the momentum among some of the local elites, the CEO of one of the state’s largest construction companies wishes to model the region’s economic development and inter-governmental cooperation on the Denver metropolitan model.
Understanding the extent of intercommunity political, economic, and social coordination is increasingly important, especially in light of local elites’ awareness of the role global capitalism plays in locales. Further research into the complexities of regionalism from a socio-geographic perspective that utilizes a social network methodology is needed.