Designing the Megaregion Meeting Urban Challenges at a New Scale by Jonathan Barnett
Annotated Table of Contents Foreword: Noted landscape architect and educator Frederick Steiner, in his foreword to this book, quotes the American economist and political scientist Herbert Simon: “To design is to devise courses of actions aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” Summary: Around the world, cities and their suburbs are advancing across the landscape to meet neighboring cities and suburbs, forming megaregions which are capturing much of the world’s population and economic growth. In the United States this growth is destabilizing the natural landscape, creating increased highway and airport congestion, and making access to jobs and housing opportunities more and more unequal. However, the growth of megaregions is also an opportunity to meet these challenges by making incremental changes in the way development is managed. This book describes how to design the interaction of development with ecoregions to safeguard the natural environment and adapt to a warming climate. It identifies fast-enough trains, like the Acela in the Northeast megaregion, as the key to reducing traffic gridlock and air-traffic delays by rebalancing the whole transportation system. It suggests practical ways in which the growth of the megaregion can be used to correct unnecessary new urbanization and the inequality between old and new urban areas. For example, changes in retailing are turning the ubiquitous commercial strip development along highways into land banks waiting to be re-zoned for housing and new-economy jobs. All the recommended changes can be achieved using existing governmental structures and normal business practices.
Chapter 1: A New Scale for Urban Challenges • •
Megaregions are predictions: we still have a chance to shape them The need to design megaregions