Sandal's strategy for the Region's future.

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There are no national economies anymore--only a global economy with a constellation of regional economies with strong cities at their core.

"As it becomes ever more clear," as author Neal Peirce put it, "that national economies essentially are constellations of regional economies, each with a major city at the core ... cities like San Diego play an ever-increasing leadership role in shaping the entire region."

San Diego, if it is to be a city of the future, must follow the example of the city-state, a powerful new "mega-region" in its own right.

That is the central tenet of the 2008 San Diego Regional Economic Prosperity Strategy report released recently.

Indeed, the San Diego Association of Governments, or Sandag, recognizes the emergence of mega-regions--in our case north from Ventura County down to and including all of Baja California.

The report identifies the demographic and economic challenges facing the region, and promotes strategic goals and actions to meet these challenges and improve the competitiveness of our economy.

Specifically, the report identifies three main challenges facing the region today: First, unbalanced job growth, with more low paying jobs being created than high and middle income jobs; second, a widening gap in the earnings of low and high paid workers; and third, a high cost of riving that has zapped the purchasing power and standard of living of area residents.

The Region

San Diego--the region--has already managed to lay the grid for tremendous growth in the biotech and technology sectors for the so-called "New Economy" and, thanks to Quaicomm Inc., a wireless revolutionary presence in telecommunications.

This recognition that we need to focus our energies on being a high-tech, biotech sector with all that this entails is quite an achievement.

The strategy identifies the region's most pressing economic challenges, lists the most probable causes, and offers 10 strategic goals and 27 action steps, as well as listing who should take responsibility for carrying out these actions.

The report "offers a blue print for investing in public infrastructure and instituting supportive, flexible policies that will create opportunities for increasing the number of high paying jobs in the region, helping to balance our economy and spur the growth of our standard of living."

Such a unanimous find by the planning committee and endorsed by the Sandag board marks a milestone for the region and bodes well for future land use, water, environmental, energy and transportation infrastructure decisions in our region, and the mega-region we might eventually become part of.

Understood

But I wonder if this two-volume report was read and understood by all board members, let alone the cities and the county, which the public and business community depend on to make decisions Sandag is calling for.

In fact, some ask what Sandag is but a think tank that serves at the pleasure of the county and cities in the region, albeit with expertise and mandates in transportation. That is probably unfair.

Sandag, for example, has some of the best economists and planners in the business. The report is itself a masterpiece of strategic planning and forecasting. It was done "in house," too. Another reason augurs well for Sandag.

Neal Peirce and his colleague at McKinsey & Co., Kenichi Ohmae, economist and author of "The Borderless Economy" and "The Rise of the Region State" are right: Planning for the future cries out for such mega-regional thinking and for regional authority.

We don't have such a regional authority, though the county occasionally makes noise about being one. Sandag is the closest thing to it.

John M. Eger, the Van Deerlin endowed chairman of communications and public policy in the School of Journalism & Media Studies at San Diego State University, is a member of the Envision San Diego partnership, a media forum for discussing public policy issues affecting the region.