With more governmental entities than most regions—2 counties, 2 cities, 13 towns, over 100 incorporated villages—Long Island is truly challenged when it comes to regional planning. Each jurisdiction has the right to make land use decisions over the properties they control. There is no overriding entity that has the authority to help orchestrate plans across multiple jurisdictions. So really big ideas about how to control sprawl, or how to develop commercial districts, how to expand agricultural lands, or even how to "densify" specific areas to encourage greater open space in other locations, become really difficult here. Such planning is more typically found in places that have county-wide land use decision making authority. Seeing what has been achieved elsewhere and what can be imagined for Long Island, perhaps we can find a way to forge the necessary agreements and alliances to create a similar set of broad, wide-scale options for ourselves.