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Downtown Stamford, Connecticut |
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RPA is committed to strengthening the region's centers. The goal of redirecting much of the region's growth to centers is based on the principle that centers-places that provide housing, jobs, education, shopping, and recreation in close proximity-are the form of community that can deliver the largest number and greatest diversity of people. By providing for efficient use of land, energy, infrastructure, and other resources, centers also provide critical benefits to the region's economy and environment. Finally, the region's hundreds of city and town centers provide a permanent organizing framework for future growth in the region.
Physical planning and design is the centerpiece of this campaign. Design studies - models, drawings, "before and after simulations" - make it possible to test the physical capacity of the region's centers and to understand the impacts of new structures on the visual and natural environment. Even more importantly, design studies enable communities to understand the consequences of planning policy, and to articulate their own vision for how their communities should grow. In this way it is possible to link locally-based place-making with a regional smart growth agenda.
One of the centerpieces of our advocacy efforts for the Regional Design program is the New Jersey Mayor's Institute on Community Design, held at Princeton University to promote better planning and development in communities throughout New Jersey. RPA's work with the Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York has also featured the principles of the design program, most notably in the Planning and Design Workshop. In addition to these special projects, the Regional Design Program is built around four major initiatives, each of which combines research with place-based planning and design studies:
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Hastings, New York |
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The Centers Initiative is devoted to reinforcing the region's established cities and towns. Interventions range from master plans for major cities such as Stamford (one of eleven "regional downtowns" identified in RPA's Third Plan), to waterfront revitalization projects in smaller towns such as Hastings -on -Hudson New York. These projects demonstrate the ways in which future growth in the region can be accommodated on existing centers in ways that achieve local community-based revitalization efforts as well as a regional smart growth agenda. |
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Netcong Station |
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The Transit-Friendly Communities Initiative links town planning and design to the region's transportation infrastructure, demonstrating the ways in which rational land-use and transportation support each other. In addition to several collaborations with Metro North Railroad, RPA continues to work closely with New Jersey Transit. Through the Transit Friendly Communities for New Jersey program, RPA has completed station-area planning and design studies for more than a dozen New Jersey municipalities of different sizes.
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Nassau Hub |
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The Suburban Redesign Initiative: Much of the region's growth takes place just beyond the "first ring suburbs" - not in centers but in the loose agglomeration of retail and office uses called "edge cities". These places have a critical mass of activities, but are arranged in auto-oriented configurations that make them effectively "built out" at low and inefficient densities. The Suburban Redesign Initiative is devoted to demonstrating the ways in which the various features of the suburban landscape - from regional malls, to gated communities, to the latest generation of "edgeless cities" even farther out - can be redesigned to absorb new growth. In cooperation with the Lincoln Institute of Land policy, RPA has completed vision plans for the Somerset County Regional Center, a 22 square mile edge city in New Jersey and the Nassau Hub on Long Island.
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The Healthy Communities Initiative, supported by the Centers for Disease Control and the Milbank Memorial Fund, restores the historic relationship between the disciplines of town planning and health science. By so doing, the core of the regional design agenda - promoting development in mixed use, pedestrian-oriented centers, remaking the suburban landscape to reduce auto dependency, and designing transit-supportive development - is seen not only as rational, sustainable, "smart growth", but as a strategy for promoting active, healthy lifestyles.
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