Regional answers move to center stage

This is the first of three editorials looking at the year behind us for clues about what might be ahead.

LIKE MOST "-isms," "regionalism" is an ugly word and an uglier concept. It means the muddling of municipalities, the mingling of Virginia Beach with Norfolk with Chesapeake with Portsmouth with Suffolk, to the degradation and detriment of all.

But regional cooperation, now that's a thing to be celebrated without reservation.

It's the thing that allows Suffolk and Virginia Beach to join hands to build highways that benefit both, and that neither could construct on its own. It allows Chesapeake and Portsmouth to put their heads together to consider the wisdom of an ethanol plant, and to reach the conclusion that it makes no sense. It allows everybody in Isle of Wight County to enjoy the riches of port operations concentrated in Norfolk.

This was a good year for regional cooperation, perhaps the best in Hampton Roads in a very long time. And it somehow arrived without anyone giving up the things that were important to them, that make them a city unto themselves.

You can argue about whether a local transportation authority is the best way to pay for highways, but it's the way the General Assembly gave us in 2007. Despite some early and ugly arguing, in the end, governments across Hampton Roads endorsed a regional authority that will allow us to start building roads within months instead of decades.

The process wasn't pretty. A few municipalities voted against the authority and its taxes. Still others are having serious buyer's remorse.

But the principle exemplified by the Hampton Roads Transportation Authority endures despite all that. To secure the infrastructure necessary to ensure the health of its communities and businesses, Hampton Roads joined together, both Peninsula and Southside, to build it.

That's precisely as it should be, and should create a model for what's possible when a region's municipalities trade provincialism for cooperation.

Chesapeake, deserved or not, has long been perceived as an obstacle to that kind of thinking. To the consternation of its neighbors, the city single-handedly tried to unravel the Southeastern Public Service Authority, to pick one example.

But later in the year, when it came to the fate of a proposal to build the nation's biggest ethanol plant, Chesapeake picked a new model. The plant was to be in South Norfolk, right on the Portsmouth line. And so Chesapeake leaders reached across the border and involved their neighbors in the decision.

Strictly speaking, they didn't have to. Chesapeake did it because it was the right thing to do. Even though Chesapeake officials were the ones who did the voting, it was a collective decision that led to the rejection of the refinery and to the death of the ethanol plant.

And as 2007 wound to a close, cities across Hampton Roads were trying to figure out how to ban smoking in restaurants. Some cities want the General Assembly to ban smoking statewide; others are merely asking for permission to ban it in their bars and restaurants.

But the key is that they're working together toward a common goal, toward a common good.

Transportation, ethanol and a smoking ban. Those are three real examples of regional cooperation, in a region where cooperation has been historically in short supply, limited by age-old rivalries and historic competition.

If 2007 wasn't just a coincidence, wasn't just a spasm where self-interest was the same as common goals, perhaps there's hope that regional cooperation can help show the way toward even more solutions in the new year.

Tomorrow: "Intervention needed to halt teen killings"