michael neumann

Regional design: Recovering a great landscape

architecture and urban planning tradition

Michael Neuman*

College of Architecture, Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, College Station, TX 77843-3137, USA

Abstract

We are witnessing a rebirth of physical design, both in practice and the academy, spurred on by neo-traditional community

planning and neo-urbanism. This article attributes the sources of contemporary regional design to this renaissance. It also

traces its origins to classic regional planning, which has been a professional activity for over a century. Regional design shapes

the physical form of regions. It takes a regional perspective in guiding the arrangement of human settlements in communities.

It is a strategy to accommodate growth by providing a physical framework to determine or guide the most bene®cial location,

function, scale, and inter-relationships of communities within a region. This strategic function of regional design distinguishes

it from urban and regional planning, apart from its focus on physical form. Communities, the links among them, and their

environs are the three key physical components of regions that are the objects of regional design. Regional design strives to

connect these communities by transport, communication, and other links into regional networks. Keeping the fringes or

environs of the communities relatively sparsely settled is another aim. The article presents historic and contemporary

examples of regional design in the US and Europe, and outlines principles for regional design. # 2000 Elsevier Science B.V.

All rights reserved.

Keywords: Regional; Design; Planning

1. Introduction

Once and again, regional design is at the forefront in

large-scale landscape architecture and urban planning.

Regional design is among a select set of ideas and

practices, along with sustainability, consensus-build-

ing, and the so-called `new' urbanism, that are leading

the way to a new conception of professional practice.

What regional design has come to be, and what import

it has, comprise the subjects of this article.

I say ònce and again' for two reasons. First,

regional design was regional planning, from the turn

of the past century through World War II. Thereafter

came an extended period in which both landscape

architecture and city planning were practiced at either

such a small scale Ð garden and site design Ð or with

such a policy and zoning orientation that traditional

physical planning and urban design were essentially

lost.

We are witnessing a rebirth of physical design, both

in practice and the academy, spurred on by neo-tradi-

tional community planning and neo-urbanism. Neo-

traditionalism and neo-urbanism began as enterprises

that used small communities and neighborhoods as

their typical scale. Lately, this scale has grown to

include large towns. They are now being built in the

Landscape and Urban Planning 47 (2000) 115±128

* E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Neuman)

0169-2046/00/$20.00 # 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

PII: S 0 1 6 9 - 2 0 4 6 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 7 9 - 1

exurbs and inner city areas, in addition to the suburban

locales that were the sites, by and large, of their

genesis. Nonetheless, the scale remains at the indivi-

dual community level. An exception is the book The

Next American Metropolis (Calthorpe, 1993).

When we couple the small-scale acts of new com-

munity formation with a regional context and the

powerful external forces that shape urban growth,

we begin to see the imperative for regional design.

The emergence of metropolitan economies as domi-

nant nodes in a global economy that is increasingly

based on services is one leading indicator of the

context and forces (Castells, 1996, 1989; Hall,

1998; Jacobs, 1984; Markusen, 1987; Saxenian,

1994). Metropolitan economies are enabled by the

high-tech digital revolution in computers, telecommu-

nications and information systems that network a

region as never before. Add to this an explosion in

mobility, both national and international in terms of

migration, global business, and tourism, and intra-

regional in terms of increased vehicle ownership and

usage, and we see that conditions now are not the same

that gave rise to the limited social critique that

spawned neo-traditionalism nearly two decades ago.

Regional design has resurfaced by necessity to cope

with these new realities.

Regional design shapes the physical form of

regions. It takes a regional perspective in guiding

the arrangement of human settlements, preferably in

communities. Regional design strives to connect these

communities by transport, communication, and other

links into regional networks. Keeping the fringes or

environs of the communities relatively sparsely settled

is another aim. Communities, the links among them,

and their environs are the three key physical compo-

nents of regions that are the objects of regional design.

The regional design of today is a far cry from the

earliest conceptions of Patrick Geddes and Ebenezer

Howard, Frederick Law Olmsted and Peter Kropotkin.

These founding fathers based their analyses on the

conditions of their day, quite different from today.

Times were simpler, cities smaller, technology less

pervasive and complex, and the lines between urban

and rural were sharply de®ned. Their insights and

theories were informed by the then-emergent disci-

plines of sociology and geography, and they translated

their understanding into physical form and design.

Thus, they focused their considerable energies on the

physical form of the region, and the interaction of

nature, understood as rural, non-urban environments;

with cities, understood as a cultural manifestation

much different from nature. Kropotkin discussed this

at length in his masterpiece Fields, Factories and

Workshops, as did Ebenezer Howard in To-morrow:

A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, and Patrick Geddes in

Cities in Evolution (Geddes, 1915; Howard, 1898;

Kropotkin, 1913).

2. The sources of regional design today

We can trace the sources of contemporary regional

design to two related trends. One is a long-standing

critique of urban sprawl. The other is the basic

response opened up by this critique, the renewal of

physical planning at the neighborhood and community

levels. When early social critiques of sprawl, such as

William Whyte's article Urban Sprawl, John Che-

ever's novel Bullet Park, and even Joni Mitchell's

song Big Yellow Taxi and Pete Seeger's song Little

Boxes raised public consciousness to the extent that

politicians were motivated to act (Cheever, 1969;

Mitchell, 1970; Whyte, 1958). The earliest profes-

sional response, in the sixties and seventies, was

growth management. While growth management did

attempt to guide the location, form, and timing of

growth, it did so using various legal mechanisms, such

as performance zoning, tier systems, impact and

development fees, concurrency environmental regula-

tions, transferable development rights, land-banking,

and so on. Growth management through the eighties

did not rely on design as a tool. Exceptions, of course,

occurred in the names of Ian McHarg and Ed Bacon,

though they did not explicitly espouse growth man-

agement. McHarg's book, Design with Nature, caused

an international sensation and revolutionized the way

landscape architecture and regional planning were

taught. His approach used a design method that inte-

grated, on a regional scale, environmental and other

principal factors as determinants of where and how

much development the land was able to support. The

method identi®ed the capacities of natural systems to

absorb the impacts of human activities (McHarg,

1969). Ed Bacon, whose career as Planning Director

for the City of Philadelphia spanned four decades, and

whose plan for the City of Brotherly Love got him

116 M. Neuman / Landscape and Urban Planning 47 (2000) 115±128

on the cover of Time magazine, is perhaps best

known for his book The Design of Cities. This book

describes how to direct and redirect growth within

cities. This distinguished it from the mainstream of

growth management, which had rural and suburban

foci (Bacon, 1967; Philadelphia City Planning Com-

mission, 1960).

Another exception was Kevin Lynch, whose life-

long work dealt with the design and form of cities. His

major book about the regional scale was Managing the

Sense of a Region (Lynch, 1976). Yet Lynch did not

focus on regional design, and only used the term once,

in passing and without further explication, in all his

voluminous writings (Lynch, 1974).

McHarg, Lynch, and Bacon inspired contemporary

regional design. Each, in his own way, practised a

form of it in his professional work. Yet none had the

complete, synthetic, comprehensive planning and

design approach laid out by the founding fathers of

regional planning Ð Olmsted, Geddes, Kropotkin,

and Howard Ð a century ago (Hall, 1988). In between

the two groups were signi®cant examples of regional

design in practice, notably the New York Regional

Plan Association's (NYRPA) ten volume 1929±1930

Plan for New York and Environs and Patrick Aber-

crombie's, 1944 Greater London Plan. Continental

cases followed, including the `Finger Plan' for Copen-

hagen and The Randstad (Ring City) Plan for urban

Holland. Another compelling episode of regional

design was the counter-plan to the 1929 NYRPA plan,

produced by a group of New York and New Jersey

architects, planners, and intellectuals led by Lewis

Mumford, and organized under the name of the

Regional Plan Association of America. For an

account, see Sussman's Planning the Fourth Migra-

tion: The Neglected Vision of the Regional Planning

Association of America (Sussman, 1976).

3. Regional design in outline

As an act of foresight and planning, regional design

organizes growth, development and redevelopment in

and around existing and planned central places. There

are several broad goals that can be attained using good

regional design: the ef®cient provision of basic public

and commercial services (infrastructure and utilities,

goods movement and communications); the protection

of rural lands and sensitive natural environments; the

support of agriculture, ranching, and other rural eco-

nomic activities; and the redevelopment and revitali-

zation of cities and other communities.

In a sense, regional design is an antidote to the post-

World War II sprawl pattern of development. The

cumulative impacts of sprawl have had profound

and pervasive effects on our communities and our

lives. Practitioners and politicians alike believe that

these far-reaching impacts can be better managed

using regional design. Regional co-operation in guid-

ing the ongoing development and redevelopment of

communities of place is the thrust. Effective regional

design is seen to afford bene®ts:

� More sensitive consideration of existing resources

and historic settlement patterns

� More equitable distribution of the benefits and

costs of growth, both geographically and demogra-

phically

� More full-service communities with a better geo-

graphic balance of jobs and housing, in which

people can live, work, play, and feel a strong sense

of belonging

� Lower taxes, through the more efficient provision

of public facilities and services, and lower social

service and environmental protection costs

Regional design is the arrangement of human set-

tlements in harmony with the regional landscape. It

considers the way a system of places Ð cities, towns,

and villages Ð is connected via infrastructure Ð

roads, transit, utilities, and communications pathways

Ð and cushioned from each other by large landscapes

that allow the settlements to `breathe' Ð river corri-

dors, farmlands, parks, marshes, and other open

spaces.

This triad of central places, infrastructure linkages,

and open spaces or environs provides the conceptual

bulwark that shores up regional design. Regional

design is the intentional act of shaping the physical

form of human settlement patterns in geographic

regions. It is a strategy to accommodate growth by

providing a physical framework to determine or guide

the most bene®cial location, function, scale, and inter-

relationships of communities within a region.

Regional design is a strategy that sets the course for

action that determines smaller scale decisions. Regio-

nal design is to community development and neo-

M. Neuman / Landscape and Urban Planning 47 (2000) 115±128 117

urbanism as urban design is to architecture. Just as all

architects should be ¯uent in urban design, all urban

designers and new urbanists should be ¯uent with

regional design.

This strategic function of regional design distin-

guishes it from urban and regional planning, apart

from its focus on physical form. Regional design is a

potent combination that can portray a vital vision of

what a region can look like, and how to achieve it.

Settlement and community development are local,

and not regional in nature. People choose to live and

work in places largely due to local characteristics.

Nonetheless, all communities exist within a region and

are in¯uenced by it. Climate, topography, geography,

culture, and even economic patterns are, nowadays,

regional phenomena. Whether an individual, in the

course of choosing where and how to live, or a

planning and design professional, in the course of

shaping places to live; both intuitively and intention-

ally factor in regional features in their decision-mak-

ing. Thus, the following sections consider the regional

aspects of regional design.

4. What is a region?

A region may be de®ned in many ways. From a land

planning perspective, it is a contiguous territory that

its inhabitants relate to through their activities. It is an

area where one lives and carries out most recurring

activities (Friedmann and Weaver, 1979).

There are many types of regions. The differences in

type depend on the activities that occur in them. Land

planners work with housing regions, labor-market

regions, commuting regions, watershed regions, air

quality regions, natural regions (ecosystems), geolo-

gic regions, and retail market regions, among others.

Outside of planning, there are various economic,

political, and geographic regions. The geographic

extent of the activity(ies) and physical characteris-

tic(s), that de®ne the region, determine its area.

In de®ning regions suitably for planning purposes,

one must consider the object of planning. While

communities are often the objects of planning, it is

important to look at the region as well. As commu-

nities exist within a region, their form and character

are in¯uenced by their region. Different types of

regions affect their communities in different ways.

Region types also exert their particular in¯uences on

the inter-relationships of communities in a region, as

well as the linkages that connect them and the environs

that buffer them.

5. Types of regions

The distribution of people in a region, represented

by their homes and workplaces, is characterized by the

settlement pattern. Three types of regional settlement

patterns are: metropolitan; corridor; and rural. Listed

below are general descriptions of these three types,

several hybrids among them, and a new form that

some call a mega-city region.

5.1. A region is a network of components

Whether metropolitan, corridor, or rural, a region is

a network of central-place communities which are

connected by transport and communication linkages

and surrounded by less intensely settled land. The

three key physical components of regions are central

places, linkages, and environs. Central places are

communities of place that serve an outlying region.

Linkages which connect communities may be trans-

port links, communications channels, utilities, and

infrastructure. Environs are the lands outside of cen-

tral places. The intentional arrangement of these three

physical components forms the foundation for regio-

nal design.

5.2. Metropolitan regions

Metropolitan areas are densely populated. Their

buildings, roads, and spaces are bound together in a

tightly woven ùrban fabric'. They exhibit a greater

diversity than corridor and rural regions. Metro areas

possess a greater variety of jobs, housing options,

educational and cultural opportunities, and a broader

mix of people than other regions. Their economies are

strongly linked to national and international econo-

mies. The focal point of a metropolitan area, in terms

of concentration of activities, is usually one or more

large, central cities. However, the importance that

central cities possess has been weakening. In some

cases there may be more than one downtown within a

metro area (Fig. 1).


Another important characteristic of metropolitan

regions is the relationship of their suburbs to their

central cities. Historically, close-in suburbs served as

the bedrooms to their urban workplaces. More

recently, suburbs have been oriented outward, toward

other suburbs, or toward exurban and rural areas.

Correspondingly, their links to the central city have

weakened, thus weakening the city and the entire

metro area. While metro areas exert a distant reach,

far beyond their built-up area, for regional design

purposes, a metropolitan region consists of the densely

settled, contiguous areas.

5.3. Corridor regions

Corridor regions are areas surrounding linear trans-

portation routes. Key communities are oriented along,

and bound together, by the major transit corridor.

Linear corridor regions typically extend from one

metropolitan area to another, crossing suburbs and

rural lands along the way. The focal point of this type

of region is not a point at all. Rather, it is the

transportation corridor that is the focal axis, or spine,

of the region. A corridor region is anchored at either

end by a city, or in the case of a short and small-scale

rural corridor, a town (Fig. 2).

Corridor regions can vary in scale and form from the

Boston±Washington Megalopolis to a highway linking

two medium-sized cities. Some corridor regions can

also form arcs or loops, and can be de®ned by the

outermost ring roads that circle large metropolises,

some of which have two or even three rings. London,

Madrid, and Houston are examples of three-ring cities.

The lands in corridor regions re¯ect the wide range

of settlement patterns of the areas they encompass. A

well-known New Jersey, USA, corridor Ð Princeton/

Route One Ð has evolved during its history along the

range of corridor types. Early on, discrete central place

communities Ð Trenton, Princeton, New Brunswick

Ð were situated along the corridor and surrounded by

Fig. 1. Metropolitan region.


open rural lands. More recently, the land between

these communities has been developed. This devel-

opment has been variously described as scattered,

leapfrog, commercial strip, or sprawl.

Land in a corridor region often forms a haphazard

set of development patterns with disparate uses.

Development is not inter-connected to form a rich

mosaic, as in a metropolitan region. Corridor region

growth in the last few decades has occurred in rapid

spurts. Nearby central places are connected by the

corridor axis, and do not exhibit the rich articulation of

connections in a well-developed metropolitan region.

Much recent development in corridor regions has been

weakly connected to its environs as well. These

haphazard patterns result in of®ces that abut farm-

lands, and housing that is not near employment,

commerce, and services. This new settlement pattern

in corridor regions has precluded the formation of

communities as they were formerly understood as

central places.

5.4. Rural regions

Rural regions typically consist of a system of towns,

villages, and hamlets surrounded by open lands. The

forests, farms, marshes, ranches, and other open lands

that make up the environs surrounding rural settled

places have fewer transport, utility, or communica-

tions lines crossing them. Settlement is concentrated

in rural communities, and is sparse in the environs

(Fig. 3).

An exemplary rural region is agricultural. It pos-

sesses large, contiguous tracts of farmland. It is pep-

pered with rural communities. It is loosely crossed by

two lane country roads, and occasionally, wider high-

ways. A largely intact rural region has not suffered

incursions by sprawl or a proliferation of linkages.

Another type of rural region can be even more distant

from urban centers. These may be called ecological or

natural regions, although strictly speaking, those two

terms can be misleading in this context. Terminology

Fig. 2. Corridor region.


aside, North American examples of this sort of region

include the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Ever-

glades in Florida, and the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

5.5. Hybrid regions

Just as the once-sharp edge between town and

country has dissolved in sprawl, once-distinct region

types, such as rural and metropolitan, have dissolved

into each other as well. At an extreme scale, a mega-

lopolis, as described by geographer Jean Gottmann, is

a linear corridor multi-metropolitan region. The ori-

ginal North American megalopolis stretched from

Boston to Washington, encompassing ten states, 400

miles, and ®fty million people. The Los Angeles±San

Diego±Tijuana megalopolis is a corridor-based South-

ern California megalopolis. A European corridor

megalopolis is along the Rhine River in Germany,

extending from Stuttgart to Dortmund. Like corridor

regions, a megalopolis is anchored by two large cities

or metropolises at either end (Gottman, 1961).

Rural corridor regions tend to be more linear than a

metropolitan corridor region. They tend to follow

geographic terrain such as river valleys. Classic exam-

ples include the Burgundy Valley in France or the

Central Valley in California. The size of cities and

towns in the rural corridors tend to be smaller than in

urban corridor regions and megalopolises. This, how-

ever, is changing. In California's Central Valley,

population is projected to increase by ten million

persons over the next 25 years. Once rural, now many

high-technology ®rms locate in the Central Valley to

¯ee the skyrocketing land prices and costs of living in

the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas.

Other large-scale multi-metropolis regions follow

the form of natural features, such as bays. Tokyo,

Yokohama, and Yokosuka ring Tokyo Bay, Japan, with

over 25 million people. San Francisco, San Jose, and

Fig. 3. Rural region.


Oakland ring San Francisco Bay with seven million.

New mega-cities sprawl in all directions over the

landscape, covering 10,000 square miles or more.

These giants, such as Mexico City, Sao Paolo, Buenos

Aires, and Los Angeles, can have 15±20 million

people or more. New types of mega-cities are emer-

ging, such as the triangular Houston±Dallas±Austin±

San Antonio multi-plex in Texas, USA. This explod-

ing region has over 13 million people spread over

27,500 square miles. San Antonio, Houston and Dallas

rank second, fourth and ®fth, respectively, among the

fastest growing US cities with populations exceeding

one million, and Austin ranks as the third fastest

growing US city, with over 500,000. Dallas alone

has grown at an average annual rate of over 4% from

1970 to the present (Ellis, 1999).

A characteristic that distinguishes new mega-cities

from older metropolises is population density and land

and resource consumption. Los Angeles, Buenos

Aires, and Sao Paolo have metropolis-wide average

population densities of about 2000 per square mile.

Compare that to Paris, London, New York, or Tokyo.

Even the suburbs of New York, such as Hoboken,

Union City, and Seacaucus have densities of 40,000

per square mile Ð 20 times more than the average in

new mega-cities. The implications for regional design

are vast.

6. Communities of place

Communities of place are the cornerstones of regio-

nal design. To enhance the rich diversity of commu-

nities that pepper mature regions, and to create new

communities, the regional design strategy organizes

growth in, and adjacent to, existing and planned

central places. In these places, public and commercial

services can be provided most ef®ciently. A regional

design strategy also leverages existing links among

communities.

Communities of place are the focal points for

settlement in regional design. One challenge facing

established communities is to assure that their com-

munity character and identity are maintained as

growth occurs. Regional design strives to provide

for variety in the size and location of central places

in order to achieve diversity and affordability in

housing, public services, jobs, and quality environ-

ments. An element of regional design is the hierarchy

of central places, which form a continuum from large

cities to small hamlets. Speci®cally, a hierarchy of ®ve

central places consists of cities, regional or corridor

centers, towns, villages, and hamlets.

The size of a central place depends on the size of the

region it serves. Small communities of place, such as

neighborhoods, hamlets and villages, serve a small

area. Towns and corridor centers serve larger areas.

Urban centers serve a metropolitan region, along with

parts of outlying corridor and rural regions. From a

planning-and-design point of view, physical features

of communities of place are:

� Compact development, rather than low density or

dispersed development

� An inter-related mixture of uses, rather than single

use

� A discernible core or central area that serves as a

focus for activities

� Well-defined boundaries, with the edges of com-

munities preferably defined by open spaces

These and other features allow a host of bene®ts to

accrue: a sense of identity and belonging to a place; a

rich perceptual experience; better access to jobs and

services; more ef®cient provision of infrastructure; a

heterogeneous community; increased social interac-

tion; and increased community involvement by its

citizens and business people.

7. The hierarchy of communities of place

The hierarchy of central place communities forms a

continuum from the largest settlements, urban centers,

to the smallest, hamlets. They are described below.

7.1. Cities

Cities are historic centers of government, industry,

commerce, residence, and culture. These municipali-

ties were built at high densities with a reliance on

public transportation. They contain a signi®cant num-

ber of jobs and households as well as a massive

investment in public facilities and access to multiple

transportation systems.

Large-scale activities occur in cities. They are

repositories of major industrial concerns, corporate


headquarters, medical centers, universities, govern-

ment complexes, convention centers, museums, and

other large institutions and facilities. These major

activities occur in cities because of their central loca-

tion within a large service region and their accessi-

bility as the hub in a full-service transportation

network.

7.2. Regional or corridor centers

These centers exist outside of metro areas. Corridor

centers are located along major transportation corri-

dors. They are large, multi-purpose settlements that

absorb growth that would otherwise spill out into the

countryside. They are accessible places that accom-

modate a signi®cant number of employees and offer a

diverse range of housing, shopping, services, and

recreation. Corridor and regional centers are compact

settlements with de®ned boundaries.

Regional and corridor centers are smaller than a

city. Activity and service centers include day-care,

post of®ce, schools, library, and other municipal ser-

vices, hospital or medical clinic, hotels, a variety of

retail and department stores as well as restaurants,

supermarkets, professional of®ces, and banks. They

are linked by public transportation.

7.3. Towns

Towns are the primary centers for growth that takes

place in suburban and rural areas. They have a com-

pact form, a distinct building design vocabulary, a

central green, square, or common, and main street.

Town cores contain retail, service, and of®ce uses as

well as community and service facilities. The core

usually has an inter-modal transportation stop or

center. Towns are residential communities with all

of the commercial and civic functions commonly

needed on a daily basis, including supermarkets, grade

schools, and a post of®ce. They also serve people

living in outlying areas.

A town is composed of several neighborhoods

which are within a short distance from the core.

Neighborhoods have a lesser range of housing types

and densities than regional centers or cities. Some

apartments and of®ces may be free-standing or located

above smaller shops in the center of town. Some or all

of the following are found in towns: day-care, post

of®ce, lower schools and perhaps middle and upper

schools, ®re police and other municipal services, as

well as corner and convenience stores, cafes, restau-

rants, retail stores, supermarkets, banks, and profes-

sional of®ces. They include a town square and other

public and private community meeting places and

spaces.

7.4. Villages

Villages are small settlements, typically less than

1000 inhabitants, which accommodate small-scale

structures and activities. They are intimate residential

communities that offer the most basic employment,

services, and shopping for their inhabitants, as well as

for those living in nearby rural and exurban areas.

Villages are less dense than towns, with less employ-

ment and fewer services. They are characterized by

compact form, basic services within the village core, a

distinct building design vocabulary, and a community

focus (village green or commons, perhaps) that is

de®ned by buildings. Larger villages may be served

by inter-community transit. Some community and

social facilities are present.

The periphery of the village is typically no more

than a quarter mile walk from the end of the com-

mercial spine, village center or main street. The high-

est density housing is located in the center, with the

lower density on the outskirts. Housing and of®ces

may be located above shops. Avillage is identi®able in

the landscape by open spaces that surround it. Village

facilities include day-care, a post of®ce, corner stores,

cafes, a restaurant, a bank, and perhaps some of®ces.

Villages have a de®ned nucleus and identi®able edges.

7.5. Hamlets

Hamlets are the smallest scale rural settlements.

These communities are primarily residential, and are

even smaller than villages, with perhaps just a few

homes and shops at a cross-roads. Hamlets have a

distinctive identity, and often possess a de®ned public

space. A hamlet has a compact nucleus with an

intentional meeting place, such as a green, tavern,

day-care, cafeÂ, or post of®ce, which distinguishes it

from the standard residence-only suburban subdivi-

sion in form, use, and character. Hamlets have their

own building design vocabulary. Streets form a com-


posite network. They are identi®able in the landscape

as distinct settlements and are surrounded by open

lands.

8. Linkages

Linkages connect the communities of a region

together into a network. They are pathways for people,

goods, services, information, and energy to circulate

about a region. This circulatory system may consist of

transport links Ð roads, rails, bikeways, bridges and

tunnels, rivers and air routes. Or communications

conduits Ð phones, computers, radio, television, fac-

simile, and emerging combinations. They may be

functional or utility links Ð water supply, sewers,

power, solid waste. Links can also be environmental

Ð greenways, waterways, wildlife corridors, scenic

corridors, beaches. These categories and lists are far

from exhaustive. There are also economic, cultural,

and historic linkages Ð markets, houses of worship,

school systems, professional associations, family ties,

and the like.

Linkages within a community serve a purpose

similar to links among communities. While at a dif-

ferent scale, they bind the various functions of the

community together. They are conduits to or for

activities by which the residents come together.

8.1. Linkage density and capacity

Different region types have different `densities' of

linkages. Linkages in metropolitan regions are the

most dense. The linkage `fabric' of streets and public

transport, communication lines and utilities is woven

tightly. Rural region linkages are the least dense. They

resemble a loose web with more space between

strands. The density of corridor region linkages falls

somewhere in-between that of rural and metropolitan

links, and tend to be linear.

Keeping these arteries unclogged is vital to the

health of the whole region. Providing for adequate

capacity and managing its ¯ow is one key to regional

design. A carrying capacity approach to establish

linkage capacity, similar to that used for development,

can be an effective tool to manage regional growth.

Acceptable levels of service can be established and

maintained on conduits between central places.

8.2. Combining linkages

In regional design, when connecting communities

of place, consideration is given to combining rights-

of-way into shared, multiple-use rights-of-way. Func-

tional linkages, especially utilities, are co-located

along existing transport or utility rights-of-way. The

sharing of linkage rights-of-way saves acquisition and

upkeep costs, keeps open lands intact, minimizes

aesthetic disruption, and decreases the environmental

consequences of their development. This approach

builds on the `common carrier' notion used in tele-

communications.

8.3. Growth-leading linkages

Taken together, transportation, water, and waste-

water disposal are `growth-leading' infrastructure. All

three need to exist in adequate capacity as a pre-condi-

tion for community-scale growth. Used wisely, growth-

leading infrastructure can be an effective growth

management technique. Managing this infrastructure

through the combined application of community ser-

vice boundaries, impact fees, adequate capital facil-

ities requirements, and timing and sequencing enables

municipalities to get a grip on growth and its costs.

In order to foster community growth at sustainable

levels, the scale of infrastructure should match the

community it serves. For example, sewage disposal

methods should vary according to settlement size. On-

site systems are appropriate for small, low-density

hamlets and villages if soil and other hydrogeologic

conditions permit, and for sparse development dis-

persed in the rural environs. Regional sewer systems

are more appropriate for large towns, regional centers,

and metropolitan areas. Mid-range community sewage

disposal systems are viable for compact villages and

small towns.

9. Environs

The lands between central places exert a profound

and pervasive in¯uence on the communities they

contain. The geography, demography, and natural

resources of a region affect the size, function, and

location of the settlements that mark its landscape. In

order to plan effectively for central places, it is


necessary to plan at the same time for the lands that

surround them. The reciprocal relation between a

place and its environs must be considered during

planning and development.

Environs differ from the central places in having

less intense settlement than the central place itself.

The less dense environ serves to de®ne the `place' of

the community and mark its borders. Activities ancil-

lary to, and supportive of, the central places occur in

the environs, such as high-value agriculture, natural-

resource extraction, recreation, and other activities

that require large tracts of land.

9.1. Metropolitan environs

Metropolitan regions are mosaics. They are made

up of cities with their central business districts and

neighborhoods, adjoining suburbs, parks, and trans-

port, river and other corridors. Metropolitan environs

are the extensions of their central and edge cities. The

reach of their urban centers extends to encompass the

activities that feed the economy of their region. Urban

centers, both central business districts and edge cities,

are the hubs for the linkages through which the region

is interconnected.

9.2. Corridor environs

Corridor environs are a relatively new phenomenon

in the landscape. The primary impetus for corridor

growth has been the massive highway construction

beginning after World War II. Early corridor regions

were based on passenger and freight railroad lines.

These highways and rail lines extended radii out from

the central cities into the open countryside or along

coastlines. Coupled with direct access to economic

centers via prime transportation links, these corridors

became the loci of unprecedented growth. Corridor

growth was so rapid and complete that it connected

areas that were formerly considered hinterlands to the

metropolitan region.

As a result of booming growth, services were

unable to keep pace. Leapfrog development, not

respecting prior community settlement form, ensued.

Accordingly, contemporary corridor environs are

mostly comprised of single-use, poorly connected

developments that are scattered loosely among open

or partly developed lands.

9.3. Rural environs

Rural environs are those open farm and natural

lands which have remained mostly intact in the face

of sprawl. The predominant settlements are rural

towns, villages, and hamlets that dot an otherwise

open landscape. Economic activities in the past were

tied to the land or its natural resources. Recently,

housing and of®ce/research campuses for urban and

corridor-housed workers have been located in them,

scattered about in low-rise buildings on sites with low

¯oor area ratios.

In the past, natural features formed the character of

rural lands. Land and water were resilient enough to

sustain sparse, primarily residential, development

without damage to the environment. Certain features

of the rural landscape had inherent capacities that were

not exceeded, so that low levels of growth were

sustained over time. These features included indigen-

ous water supply, soils, slopes and other geologic

features, the rural road network, and the prevailing

rural character. Now that has changed, as many types

of infrastructure at urban intensities have spread

throughout the countryside, often irrevocably chan-

ging its rural character. Changing this growth pattern

is one of the more dif®cult challenges for regional

design.

10. The state-of-the-art

There have been several advances to regional

design, since its rebirth in the late 1980s with the

New Jersey State Plan. It is instructive to note that

these advances have come at the hands of practi-

tioners, not academics. It is also noteworthy that

innovations have occurred in the metropolitan realm,

orchestrated by both non-governmental and govern-

mental regional entities. This part of my exegesis

concentrates on the United States, with some scattered

examples from Europe.

Precursors to a fully articulated regional design

program were manifest in the 1980s. Taking cues

from Kevin Lynch's pioneering work in San Diego,

the interdisciplinary design ®rm Carr Lynch. Hack and

Sandell undertook several regional design projects for

American clients (Lynch and Appleyard, 1974). Much

of this work was led by Gary Hack, now dean at the


University of Pennsylvania. Robert Yaro and a group

of collaborators in Massachusetts prepared a design

manual titled Dealing with Change in the Connecticut

River Valley in rural New England (Yaro et al., 1988).

The Portland metropolitan area began its studies and

plans that became the predecessors to the Portland

Metropolitan Plan of the 1990s.

Regional design as conceived in this article was

developed by the New Jersey Of®ce of State Planning.

It constituted a Regional System Advisory Committee

composed of 20 scholars, practitioners, and special-

interest group representatives. The physical frame-

work for regional design as outlined herein is

taken from the document produced by the Of®ce

of State Planning for the Committee, of which I

was the primary author (New Jersey Of®ce of State

Planning, 1990; New Jersey State Planning Commis-

sion, 1992).

Shortly thereafter, the Regional Plan Association of

New York embarked on its third regional plan. At the

outset of its journey, it engaged in a three-day collo-

quium and design charette to establish a strategy for its

plan. Some 25 national leaders in the ®eld were

gathered by Bob Yaro, now Executive Director of

the RPA, including Peter Calthorpe, Tom Cooke,

Robert Stern, and myself. The group was chaired

by Robert Geddes, founder of the design ®rm GBQC

and then Dean of Architecture at Princeton University.

On the ®rst day, after I shared my vision of regional

design, fresh off the New Jersey front, Dean Geddes

interjected that `̀ a region cannot be designed.'' That

comment notwithstanding, at the conclusion of the

three-day charette, regional design emerged as the

operative framework for the plan-to-be. The plan,

adopted in 1996, re¯ects an extraordinary synthesis

of thousands of collaborators in a regional civic milieu

over a ®ve-year period (Yaro and Hiss, 1996).

It is through intensive regionwide collaboration in a

de®ned institutional context that distinguishes regio-

nal design from architectural design or urban design.

The scale of the latter two permits an individual

designer to be the identi®ed àuthor'. The scale and

complexity of regions today mitigate against such

single authorship, even though regional plans and

designs in the US had been authored by individuals,

such as the New York State Plan in 1926 by Henry

Wright and the Appalachian Trail plan of the same era

by Benton MacKaye. Even the ®rst Regional Plan for

New York and Environs was implemented nearly

single-handedly by Robert Moses.

In 1991, the National Endowment for the Arts

awarded a grant to the New Jersey Of®ce of State

Planning to further develop regional design and pre-

pare a ®lm about it. It was co-produced with the

Regional Plan Association of New York. After this

grant and the New Jersey State and New York Regio-

nal Plans came, in rapid succession, the new Regional

Design committee of the Boston Chapter of the Amer-

ican Institute of Architects (AIA), the reforming and

renaming of the national AIA Committee on Urban

Design to Regional and Urban Design, and numerous

books and articles on the subject (Hough, 1990; Lewis,

1996; Kelbaugh, 1997; Thompson and Steiner, 1997).

Regional design has become a ®xture in the imagina-

tion and practice of planning and design professionals

nationwide.

In Europe, especially in the southern countries with

long traditions of urban planning being done exclu-

sively by architects, such as Spain and Italy, regional

design also has had a renaissance. Madrid's regional

government, the Communidad AutoÂnoma de Madrid,

prepared a regional design plan in the 1990s called the

`Plan Regional de EstrateÂgia Territorial' Ð a some-

what confusing double pleonasm which translates as

the Regional Plan of Territorial Strategy (Neuman,

1994, 1995, 1996). Barcelona adopted its own regional

design plan called the `Pla Territorial MetropolitaÁ de

Barcelona' in the 1990s, prepared by the Catalonian

regional government, to which I was a consultant.

11. Implications of the regional design imperative

Today, mobility and choice are two tenets that the

fortunate among us live by. This is especially evident

in the current period of economic wealth and abun-

dance. `Press one for more options' is much more than

a recorded prompt; it is a near mantra for the af¯uent.

What does this mean for regional design and its

practitioners?

Add to the mix dual-income households, indivi-

duals who work more than one job, the rise of home-

based work and free-lance and temporary labor, and

the panoply of portable digital telecommunications

technology, of which cellular phones and mobile

phones are just the tip of the iceberg, and we get a


sense of just how different metro regions are today

compared to just 20 years ago, much less a century ago

when regional design ®rst appeared as a professional

practice. In an era when globetrotting executives and

professionals can spend more time in planes, airports,

and cars than at home or of®ce, how does this affect

the shape of a region?

Global cities, such as New York, London, and

Tokyo, are in many ways more connected to each

other, and to ®nancial command centers in cities, such

as Los Angeles, Paris, Hong Kong, and Sao Paolo,

than they are to their own states and provinces (Sassen,

1991). The very sense of what is a region is shifting

rapidly in this global context. Amidst these massive

movements, the players at the regional design table

come and go as be®ts their strategies. For many of

them, especially recent arrivals steeped in global

business and political affairs rather than city planning,

regional design occupies an ancillary portion of their

thinking, if at all. This means that, to effectuate

regional design, institutional design becomes para-

mount.

Europeans have an advantage over North Ameri-

cans in regional institutional design, because many

countries on the continent have provincial and/or

regional institutions that can, and do, coordinate

and execute regional planning (Healey et al., 1997;

Kramer, 1996). There are few cases in North America

where effective regional governance and planning

have established track records. Among the few, Tor-

onto, San Diego, Portland, Minneapolis±St. Paul,

Lake Tahoe, and the New Jersey Pinelands stand

out. Each has taken a dramatically different tack to

institutional design and to regional design. While

explaining and exploring institutional design is

beyond the scope of this article, when it is contem-

poraneous with regional design, the latter has a better

chance to be effective. Regional design is becoming

the next frontier for planning and design professionals.

When coupled with institutional design, regional

design can move from frontier to franchise.

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Michael Neuman is an Associate Professor in the Department of

Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M

University, where he teaches courses in city and regional planning

and their institutions of governance. Before joining the Texas A&M

Faculty, he taught at the University of California at Berkeley. He is

also a consultant to private, public and non-profit clients in the

United States and Europe on metropolitan planning, strategic

planning, conflict resolution and community development. He is

the author of publications on planning, institutions, and conflict

resolution. He holds an M.C.P. from the University of Pennsylva-

nia, and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.


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