Appropriate Geographic Entities for Planning

I have serious problems with using the State of Oregon as a focus for intercourse.

States, like Nation-States have arbitrary borders and are mostly irrelevant, military/police entities created often long ago by aristocracies dividing up someone else's land among their friends and military partners.

The neighborhood needs to be the focus of Planning and Economic Re-development, and inter-community relations need to be built, understood, and maintained. The Planning Region should be some combination of metropolitan areas and watersheds, and the largest sphere of consideration, the planet earth.

Currently states and municipalities are important with respect to a most important consideration, education. But, that needs to change, as well.