Cal Bellamy said it in a recent editorial: "No one ever moved forward by standing still." I believe doing nothing to guide and plan for broad and comprehensive growth in Northwest Indiana is wrong!

Urban sprawl, much of it poorly planned in terms of the needed infrastructure and amenities, is occurring rapidly throughout Indiana's three coastal counties. More and more rural areas are no longer rural.

Now is the time for northwest Indiana to more formally recognize we are a region with goals worthy of having appropriate planning and well-thought out financing to grow, and this means to act in an even more regionally structured ways.

The following are just a few of such necessary developments. Some have already been identified, some have begun, and others are needed:

* Extended commuter rail service to Lowell and Valparaiso to accommodate both existing and future growth.

* The originally proposed Illiana Expressway starting in LaPorte County to spur the intermodal facilities -- opportunities for both northwest Indiana's and northeast Illinois' future roles in the growing American commercial rail and truck transport system.

* Merger of the Indiana and Purdue regional campuses into a regional university better organized and financed to meet the specific educational and research and service needs of this Great Lakes region.

* Public access to Lake Michigan as called for in the Marquette Plans 1 and 2, extending from Illinois eastward, reaching to the border with Michigan.

* Expansion of the Gary/Chicago International Airport.

* Northwest Indiana needs a system of natural area preserves similar to the Illinois forest preserve system.

We already are a part of the Chicago metropolitan region, so let's recognize this and strive to make the state line disappear, so to speak, and become a much more integrated part of this world-recognized metropolis.

The Regional Development Authority, the Regional Bus Authority and the Indiana Coastal Program should be viewed as only the start of becoming regionalized. Good Government Initiatives and greatly increased, coordinated and appropriately-agreed-to cooperative efforts among communities and counties should become common occurrences.

We can't stop change, and we can't go back to some rosy memory of the "good old days." We can, however, approach the future with confidence. We are a vital center of industrial activity that should persist far into the future.

We are world renowned for our natural areas and our biodiversity. The opportunities described above can provide us with the resources to provide for the appropriate infrastructure in the areas where sprawl already has occurred and in our well established but changing cities and towns. We can acquire and preserve many more natural areas and invest in ever increasingly effective environmental protection, both industrially and municipally.

I for one like living in Northwest Indiana and believe it is a land of many opportunities and a bright future.

Change is inevitable. Adjusting to change has never been easy. We must do it and now is the time to start.