Planning For Megaregions

19 April 2007 - 8:00am

With the economic, environmental and social fortunes of nearby urban areas increasingly linked, there is growing interest in developing new strategies for large-scale regional planning.

The Lincoln Institute for Land Policy reports on one of the reemerging trends in planning -- megaregions.

"Interest in the concept of 'megaregions' - clusters of neighboring large metropolitan centers that share economic activity and transportation, like the Boston-Washington corridor - is on the rise. Earlier this month, former governors Parris Glendenning (Maryland) and Michael Dukakis (Massachusetts) led a roundtable in Philadelphia on breaking down political boundaries, making regional transportation investments in high-speed rail and other transport services, and protecting the environment on a regional basis."

"This new approach to planning has been actively supported by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in exchanges that have had an important and evolving connection to Europe. Armando Carbonell, chair of the Institute's Department of Planning and Urban Form and a contributor to the Barnett book, recalls initial gatherings in the late 1990s that evolved into a regular meeting of American and European planners to explore ways to learn from one another on broad-based regional planning."

Source: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, March 29, 2007
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The areas where we have severe blight and indications of more blight to come are basically the same as they ever were. How in the world are we ever going to move our community development selves into an alternative future that thinks differently about the challenges we face in our cities and low-income suburban and rural communities?