by Chris Jones, Vice President for Research, RPA
Regions are to planners what markets are to businessmen. Simultaneously elusive and essential, the concept can refer to anything from a cluster of towns to the European Union. While defining something as fluid as the social and economic networks that evolve with landscapes and settlement patterns can be difficult, it is a fundamental step that determines how problems are perceived and what solutions are possible.
Ideally, planners need to think on several geographic scales simultaneously, since no single scale is ideally suited to all problems. Metropolitan areas may be highly appropriate for looking at the efficient functioning of labor markets, but far more limited when looking at large natural systems such as watersheds and forest preserves. Most often, problems require multiple layers of analysis with implications at the community, municipal, metropolitan and national levels. Finding the right intervention for each scale is a key to effective policy.
Since creating the nation's first regional plan in 1929, Regional Plan Association has been associated with metropolitan scale planning. Since 1967, RPA has defined the New York metropolitan area as the 31-county region stretching from New Haven to Trenton, sandwiched between the Appalachian Highlands and the Atlantic Ocean. Informed by Jean Gottman's groundbreaking 1961 study of the Northeast Megalopolis and RPA's own analysis of the Tri-State area's urbanization and commuting patterns, this definition has remained a durable and constructive framework for addressing a wide range of land use, transportation, economic and environmental challenges.
Increasingly, however, this metropolitan framework is becoming inadequate for addressing the challenges facing our region, from congestion along the I-95 corridor to the threat of exurban development to environmentally sensitive areas all along the East Coast. Our situation is not unique, with two of the trends that led to the emergence of metropolitan regions now straining the limits of what the concept can explain, and therefore successfully address. Sprawling patterns of urbanization are leading to overlapping labor markets and spheres of influence, while globalization is creating new international agglomerations and competitive conditions that can affect the most productive spatial organization of firms, institutions, infrastructure and labor. While metropolitan regions are likely to remain the primary focus for many functions, Gottman's nearly 50-year old observation of a larger "megaregion" is looking increasingly prescient for strategic as well as academic reasons.
This evolution is behind the America 2050 initiative (www.america2050.org), a national effort convened by Regional Plan Association with the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, the University of Pennsylvania, and other academic and philanthropic partners. The goal is to develop a framework for future growth through the examination of the ten or more megaregions where most of the nation's future population growth is likely to occur. As part of this effort, RPA and the Policy Research Institute for the Region (PRIOR) at Princeton University recently convened a roundtable of some of the nation's leading regional scholars. Edward Glaeser from Harvard University, and Saskia Sassen from the University of Chicago, presented papers exploring the nature of megaregional scale agglomerations and the public policies that should be addressed at this scale. Paul Krugman of Princeton University and Kip Bergstrom of the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council responded with academic and prescriptive critiques.
At the risk of reducing rich and nuanced analysis to essentials (full papers can be found at http://region.princeton.edu/pub_detail_46.html), several themes emerged that inform the utility of using megaregions to address planning challenges in the next century. One insight is that the forces associated with productivity and growth in metropolitan areas are the same forces connected to success in megaregions. As Glaeser argued, human capital and density are the best predictors of income at both metropolitan and megaregional levels, with the Northeast and Northern California as the leading examples of dense, highly educated, high-income regions. Population growth, on the other hand, is more complex, and appears to be driven by the trilogy of "sun, skills and sprawl." Weather gives a distinct advantage to places like Southern Florida and the Texas Triangle. But with anomalies like Northern California (highly productive, good weather, slow growth), the "sprawl" factor becomes interesting. Glaeser made a compelling case that housing regulations, largely restrictive zoning in high-income areas, impede growth in places where it would be economically and environmentally beneficial.
Another theme was the distinction between the fact of urbanization on a megaregional scale and the potential for more closely integrated clusters of economic activity. Sassen challenged participants to consider the possibilities of megaregions that contain the advantages of both scale (large-scale urbanization) and complexity (networks of specialized activities). The first is evident, the second has latent potential. In relating to global integration, a megaregion is large and diverse enough to organize a broad range of related activities--from central offices to support functions and manufacturing and distribution --in a way that metropolitan regions cannot. One city or smaller region in a mega region might support lower-paying, lower education demanding back office functions, while another city in a mega region might support higher-paying, higher education demanding research.
From a different angle, Krugman made a similar distinction between negative and positive externalities. Megaregions appear to exacerbate negative externalities, such as congestion, but it is not clear that the economic linkages, labor market pooling and knowledge spillovers are as yet strong enough to constitute distinct advantages.
Bergstrom was more bullish on the potential of megaregions, reminding us that the past is not predictive of the future, and that global forces require every region to reconsider their economic advantage, from the effect of global trade on the Atlanta Piedmont region to rising sea levels on Southern Florida. With metropolitan areas having expanded about as far as they can through auto-oriented commutation, megaregional expansion organized around high-speed rail could be the next wave. The Right Scale for the Right Unit of Planning
So what does all of the academic discourse mean for those on the ground struggling to find the right scale for planning in a maze of political boundaries that are sure to make a hash of it? Both presenters and audience at the roundtable zeroed in on a few policy priorities.
First, there was virtual unanimity that transportation needs to be planned and implemented at a megaregional scale, and it is equally obvious that no one is currently doing this. Rail networks and interstate highways clearly connect, organize and add value to groups of metropolitan areas, yet it is left to state transportation departments and the occasional single-mode consortium, such as the I-95 Corridor Coalition, to sort it out. The situation begs for new institutional structures at a mega-scale.
Land use and housing are equally compelling issues for the health of a megaregion and, as any planner will tell you, you can't plan for transportation without impacting land use, and vice versa. But the right scale for intervention is more complicated. As Glaeser pointed out, localized knowledge is important to sound housing and land use policies, even if the incentive structure of local regulatory and fiscal control works against regional and national interests. It may also be true that creating a better balance between local and regional land use control at the metropolitan level would resolve much of the problem observed at a larger scale. And since this goes to the heart of local control and state authority over municipalities, state land use plans and incentives may be the most viable route for improving housing production and location. Multi-state open space systems and labor market areas are notable exceptions, however, and some mechanism for coordinating land use at the megaregional scale is needed.
The right scale for economic development provoked the widest range of opinions, at least in terms of the narrow definition of attracting firms or fostering growth for particular sectors. Sassen's implied call for megaregional strategies to support complex agglomerations of firms appealed to planners' instincts, but ran counter to Glaeser's classic economic view that local competition does more to improve economic conditions by lowering taxes and regulations than regional coordination can hope to achieve. Bergstrom offered the observation that economic development officials have no problem "competing in the morning and collaborating in the afternoon" depending on the issue, and that this may reflect an appropriate balance. In any event, the case for how to take advantage of the human capital, institutions and other assets at the megaregional scale, beyond deploying transportation and land use policies, remains one of the thornier questions.
Left largely untouched by the discussion were questions of income distribution and regional equity. Some of the most productive and high-income megaregions, such as the Northeast, also have the largest disparities between rich and poor. Would promoting megaregions exacerbate this divide? Could existing disparities be addressed with policies explicitly tailored at the mega-regional scale? The potential for improved outcomes are most apparent where there are obvious geographic differences, such as the lagging economies of "second tier" cities such as Newark and Bridgeport that could benefit from a Northeast Corridor rail strategy, for example. But the question of how income distribution could be affected by megaregional strategies clearly requires additional research.
Just as there is not a "one-size-fits-all" definition of a region, it is likely that there is no single definition of the Northeast or any other megaregion that is optimal for every issue. However, as an under-used concept, it provides a new tool for addressing the persistent challenges of regional development.
Regions are to planners what markets are to businessmen. Simultaneously elusive and essential, the concept can refer to anything from a cluster of towns to the European Union. While defining something as fluid as the social and economic networks that evolve with landscapes and settlement patterns can be difficult, it is a fundamental step that determines how problems are perceived and what solutions are possible.
Ideally, planners need to think on several geographic scales simultaneously, since no single scale is ideally suited to all problems. Metropolitan areas may be highly appropriate for looking at the efficient functioning of labor markets, but far more limited when looking at large natural systems such as watersheds and forest preserves. Most often, problems require multiple layers of analysis with implications at the community, municipal, metropolitan and national levels. Finding the right intervention for each scale is a key to effective policy.
Since creating the nation's first regional plan in 1929, Regional Plan Association has been associated with metropolitan scale planning. Since 1967, RPA has defined the New York metropolitan area as the 31-county region stretching from New Haven to Trenton, sandwiched between the Appalachian Highlands and the Atlantic Ocean. Informed by Jean Gottman's groundbreaking 1961 study of the Northeast Megalopolis and RPA's own analysis of the Tri-State area's urbanization and commuting patterns, this definition has remained a durable and constructive framework for addressing a wide range of land use, transportation, economic and environmental challenges.
Increasingly, however, this metropolitan framework is becoming inadequate for addressing the challenges facing our region, from congestion along the I-95 corridor to the threat of exurban development to environmentally sensitive areas all along the East Coast. Our situation is not unique, with two of the trends that led to the emergence of metropolitan regions now straining the limits of what the concept can explain, and therefore successfully address. Sprawling patterns of urbanization are leading to overlapping labor markets and spheres of influence, while globalization is creating new international agglomerations and competitive conditions that can affect the most productive spatial organization of firms, institutions, infrastructure and labor. While metropolitan regions are likely to remain the primary focus for many functions, Gottman's nearly 50-year old observation of a larger "megaregion" is looking increasingly prescient for strategic as well as academic reasons.
This evolution is behind the America 2050 initiative (www.america2050.org), a national effort convened by Regional Plan Association with the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, the University of Pennsylvania, and other academic and philanthropic partners. The goal is to develop a framework for future growth through the examination of the ten or more megaregions where most of the nation's future population growth is likely to occur. As part of this effort, RPA and the Policy Research Institute for the Region (PRIOR) at Princeton University recently convened a roundtable of some of the nation's leading regional scholars. Edward Glaeser from Harvard University, and Saskia Sassen from the University of Chicago, presented papers exploring the nature of megaregional scale agglomerations and the public policies that should be addressed at this scale. Paul Krugman of Princeton University and Kip Bergstrom of the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council responded with academic and prescriptive critiques.
At the risk of reducing rich and nuanced analysis to essentials (full papers can be found at http://region.princeton.edu/pub_detail_46.html), several themes emerged that inform the utility of using megaregions to address planning challenges in the next century. One insight is that the forces associated with productivity and growth in metropolitan areas are the same forces connected to success in megaregions. As Glaeser argued, human capital and density are the best predictors of income at both metropolitan and megaregional levels, with the Northeast and Northern California as the leading examples of dense, highly educated, high-income regions. Population growth, on the other hand, is more complex, and appears to be driven by the trilogy of "sun, skills and sprawl." Weather gives a distinct advantage to places like Southern Florida and the Texas Triangle. But with anomalies like Northern California (highly productive, good weather, slow growth), the "sprawl" factor becomes interesting. Glaeser made a compelling case that housing regulations, largely restrictive zoning in high-income areas, impede growth in places where it would be economically and environmentally beneficial.
Another theme was the distinction between the fact of urbanization on a megaregional scale and the potential for more closely integrated clusters of economic activity. Sassen challenged participants to consider the possibilities of megaregions that contain the advantages of both scale (large-scale urbanization) and complexity (networks of specialized activities). The first is evident, the second has latent potential. In relating to global integration, a megaregion is large and diverse enough to organize a broad range of related activities--from central offices to support functions and manufacturing and distribution --in a way that metropolitan regions cannot. One city or smaller region in a mega region might support lower-paying, lower education demanding back office functions, while another city in a mega region might support higher-paying, higher education demanding research.
From a different angle, Krugman made a similar distinction between negative and positive externalities. Megaregions appear to exacerbate negative externalities, such as congestion, but it is not clear that the economic linkages, labor market pooling and knowledge spillovers are as yet strong enough to constitute distinct advantages.
Bergstrom was more bullish on the potential of megaregions, reminding us that the past is not predictive of the future, and that global forces require every region to reconsider their economic advantage, from the effect of global trade on the Atlanta Piedmont region to rising sea levels on Southern Florida. With metropolitan areas having expanded about as far as they can through auto-oriented commutation, megaregional expansion organized around high-speed rail could be the next wave. The Right Scale for the Right Unit of Planning
So what does all of the academic discourse mean for those on the ground struggling to find the right scale for planning in a maze of political boundaries that are sure to make a hash of it? Both presenters and audience at the roundtable zeroed in on a few policy priorities.
First, there was virtual unanimity that transportation needs to be planned and implemented at a megaregional scale, and it is equally obvious that no one is currently doing this. Rail networks and interstate highways clearly connect, organize and add value to groups of metropolitan areas, yet it is left to state transportation departments and the occasional single-mode consortium, such as the I-95 Corridor Coalition, to sort it out. The situation begs for new institutional structures at a mega-scale.
Land use and housing are equally compelling issues for the health of a megaregion and, as any planner will tell you, you can't plan for transportation without impacting land use, and vice versa. But the right scale for intervention is more complicated. As Glaeser pointed out, localized knowledge is important to sound housing and land use policies, even if the incentive structure of local regulatory and fiscal control works against regional and national interests. It may also be true that creating a better balance between local and regional land use control at the metropolitan level would resolve much of the problem observed at a larger scale. And since this goes to the heart of local control and state authority over municipalities, state land use plans and incentives may be the most viable route for improving housing production and location. Multi-state open space systems and labor market areas are notable exceptions, however, and some mechanism for coordinating land use at the megaregional scale is needed.
The right scale for economic development provoked the widest range of opinions, at least in terms of the narrow definition of attracting firms or fostering growth for particular sectors. Sassen's implied call for megaregional strategies to support complex agglomerations of firms appealed to planners' instincts, but ran counter to Glaeser's classic economic view that local competition does more to improve economic conditions by lowering taxes and regulations than regional coordination can hope to achieve. Bergstrom offered the observation that economic development officials have no problem "competing in the morning and collaborating in the afternoon" depending on the issue, and that this may reflect an appropriate balance. In any event, the case for how to take advantage of the human capital, institutions and other assets at the megaregional scale, beyond deploying transportation and land use policies, remains one of the thornier questions.
Left largely untouched by the discussion were questions of income distribution and regional equity. Some of the most productive and high-income megaregions, such as the Northeast, also have the largest disparities between rich and poor. Would promoting megaregions exacerbate this divide? Could existing disparities be addressed with policies explicitly tailored at the mega-regional scale? The potential for improved outcomes are most apparent where there are obvious geographic differences, such as the lagging economies of "second tier" cities such as Newark and Bridgeport that could benefit from a Northeast Corridor rail strategy, for example. But the question of how income distribution could be affected by megaregional strategies clearly requires additional research.
Just as there is not a "one-size-fits-all" definition of a region, it is likely that there is no single definition of the Northeast or any other megaregion that is optimal for every issue. However, as an under-used concept, it provides a new tool for addressing the persistent challenges of regional development.
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