A century of regionalisms: the Regional Plan Association of New York and the Regional Planning Association of America in comparative perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite their similarity in names and initials that has confused generations of planning students, the Regional Plan Association of New York (RPA, founded 1922) and the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA, founded 1923) propounded very different visions of regionalism. The RPA, following the Plan of Chicago (1909), argued for what I call ‘metropolitan regionalism’, a rail-based region tightly organized around a dense core. By contrast, the RPAA’s ‘decentrist regionalism’ envisioned a radical redistribution of population and production that would fully utilize the automobile and create a network of ‘New Towns’ in still-verdant greenbelts. I argue that regional planning in the United States since the 1920s has been dominated by the debate between these two regionalisms, and, since the disbanding of the RPAA and its successor organizations, this ‘regional conversation’ for New York has taken place within the RPA as especially their Third (1996) and Fourth (2017) Regional Plans have attempted to reconcile the two visions.