The Regionalist Dream

Abstract

This chapter attempts to understand why effective regional action on segregation and resegregation never materialized. Despite improved planning and cross-sectoral cooperation, major interventions that could possibly have changed the direction of the region did not occur. Imagining an effective regional politics capable of solving the regions' segregation and equity problems was considered a political impossibility almost from the beginning, so deep were the divisions even amidst increasing collaboration, so heavy were the ghosts of past failures. The one policy arena where the region was able to overcome its broad fragmentation and political inertia was the one area where it has long been a world leader—environmental protection. In 2016, virtually the entire region, its voters and its leaders, voted in a historic fashion to tax themselves to pay for much-needed wetlands restoration. Overcoming segregation and spatial inequality was another matter.