Executive Director's Column:
And the most important regional issue is...
Using "Six Degrees" logic, all regional matters are important

WRCOG's Executive Committee members recently participated in a goal-setting workshop geared toward helping the Agency identify issues and activities to undertake during the next few years.  As with most goal-setting workshops, members listed the important issues that they believe need to be addressed.  Toward the end of the all day session, participants were asked to list which of the issues raised they considered to be the most important for Western Riverside County's future prosperity.  As you can imagine, the “usual suspects” – housing, economic development, environment, education, water and transportation – topped the list.  Other issues, including homelessness, health care, air quality, and crime were among a number of others discussed.

Kevin Bacon (photo by contactmusic.com)

While some were “voted” as a higher priority than others, there really wasn't a strong consensus regarding which issue should be deemed the “most important.”  Here's a thought as to why.  There isn't a “most important” regional issue. They are all important, and maybe equally so.  Just ask Kevin Bacon.

You have probably heard of the “The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”  Based on the John Guare play and movie adaptation “Six Degrees of Separation,” the game postulates that we are all connected by six or fewer stages of circumstance or acquaintance.  In substituting the word “Separation” with “Kevin Bacon,” the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” gamers hypothesize that Bacon is the center of the universe when it comes to connecting actors.  By using Bacon as an end point, one can link him in six degrees (steps) or less to almost any other actor. For instance, Kevin Bacon links to Kevin Costner in one swift link, as both appeared in the movie “JFK.”  Julia Louis-Dreyfus of TV's Seinfeld, however, takes all six steps to make the connection to Bacon. She was in “Christmas Vacation” with Randy Quaid, who was in “Major League II” with Tom Berenger, who was in “Shattered” with Greta Scacchi, who was in “Presumed Innocent” with Harrison Ford, who was in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” with Karen Allen, who was in “Animal House” with – guess who – Kevin Bacon.  

So too it is with regional priority setting, as evidenced by the number of important regional issues raised by WRCOG's leaders.  No one or two issues really stood out, and it's not a big deal.  Using “Six Degrees” logic, we can easily see how individual regional issues are inextricably connected – and of equal importance – to one another, and that (insert your most important issue here) is, in fact, the center of the regional issues universe.

Let's try it.  The region's real personal income per capita has continued a decline that started decades ago.  Among the top 17 metropolitan areas in the United States, the SCAG region ranks dead last in this category, trailing areas like Detroit, Cleveland, Houston, Sacramento, Miami, and Cincinnati.  Nearly one in every six persons in the SCAG region lives in poverty.  

It's no surprise that this data leads to a second degree of separation – housing affordability.  Despite the recent plunge in home prices, Southern California continues to be one of the least affordable housing markets in the state and nation.  Fewer than 50% of the region's households can afford to purchase a median-priced home here.  With the region set to add approximately 6 million more residents in addition to the 16 million of us already here, it's a good thing that approximately 400,000 new homes were constructed during the 1990's, right?  Maybe not, considering that in actuality 633,000 new homes were needed to accommodate the 1.9 million additional residents who settled here during that 10-year period.

The inability to provide enough new homes is a third degree of separation, and a likely contributor to the region's relatively high price of housing and low rate of housing affordability. Coupled with the first degree of separation fact regarding the region's low real personal per capita income, a troubling picture of potential future home ownership – a key indicator of economic health in any region – supported by second and third degrees of separation emerges.

A fourth degree of separation might be found in noting that, to no one's real surprise, transit boardings have increased in recent years in the Southern California region.  It makes sense that if the region's per capita income declines, and rate of poverty grows, the discretion people have to select travel modes become more limited.  Transit becomes a favored – and often the only viable – means of travel for those who can no longer afford to, or desire not to, prioritize the purchase, operation, and maintenance of an automobile. Thus, it makes sense that transit boardings in the region are on the increase.  

But if transit ridership is up, why has the region's air quality generally worsened during the last few years?  A potential and troubling fifth degree of separation is revealed in the fact that older model vehicles – which comprise only about 10% of the region's cars and trucks but do not have modern emissions-regulating technologies and are often exempt from smog-check programs – account for nearly 90% of the vehicle emissions spewed into the atmosphere. Could it be that other cost considerations, including those discussed above, are contributing to decisions by the public to not replace aging cars and trucks?

This leads to the center of this particular discussion's universe, and a sixth degree of separation.  Among the nine largest metropolitan regions in the United States, the SCAG region ranks last in the percentage of adults who have attained at least a high school diploma.  Math and reading test scores among 8th graders are poor, and high school dropout rates have generally increased in four of the six counties.  Of those finishing high school, fewer are completing courses required for entrance to the University of California and California State University educational systems.  This leads to an interesting question:  Will our future workforce have what it takes to help turn some of the above-mentioned disturbing trends around?  

“Six Degrees” logic helps us to understand that clues exist in just about any regional issue to help explain others, whether we think they are related or not.  Chances are that your issue – the center of your universe – has many degrees of separation with other regional matters, making each interchangeable and, thus, equally important.

We need to work on identifying and understanding the interrelationships between and among the many regional issues we face.  Sometimes we won't need many “degrees of separation” to find these linkages.  Other times we might need all six degrees, which only lends credence to their interrelation.  And because of that, achieving progress on any single regional issue can likely advance others, as well. In the end, virtually any regional issue can claim the title of “most important,” which renders exercises in priority setting as - well, footloose.