Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

Regional Plan Association

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Abbreviation
  
RPA

Type
  
Non-Profit

Formation
  
1922

Purpose
  
Regional planning

Regional Plan Association

Headquarters
  
Manhattan, New York,  New York

Region served
  
New York metropolitan area USA

The Regional Plan Association of the United States is an independent, not-for-profit regional planning organization, founded in 1922, that focuses on recommendations to improve the quality of life and economic competitiveness of a 31-county New York-New Jersey-Connecticut region in the New York metropolitan area. Headquartered in New York City, it has offices in Princeton, New Jersey and Stamford, Connecticut.

Contents

Regional plans

RPA has produced three strategic regional plans for the New York metropolitan region since the 1920s. The chronology of their plans is as follows:

  1. RPA's First Plan in 1929, developed under the leadership of Thomas Adams, provided a guide for the area's road and transportation network.
  2. The Second Plan, published as a series of reports in the 1960s, aimed at restructuring mass transit and reinvigorating deteriorating urban centers.
  3. The RPA's Third Regional Plan, issued in 1996, "A Region at Risk," recommended improving regional mass transit, increasing protection of open space and maintaining employment in traditional urban centers.

RPA began work on its Fourth Regional Plan in 2013 and is expected to be published in 2017.

Planning philosophy

The RPA program represents a philosophy of planning described by historian Robert Fishman as "metropolitanism," associated with the Chicago School of Sociology. It promotes large scale, industrial centers and the concentration of population rather than decentralized development. Its critics point out that this results in windfall real estate profits for downtown interests. Whether this approach to regional planning is efficient, particularly because of the infrastructure and energy required to sustain such concentration, has been questioned by scholars including James Howard Kunstler.

Impact in the Tri-state area

Regional Plan Association's strategic plans have proposed numerous ideas and investments for the New York metropolitan area that have turned into major public works, economic development and open space projects, including:

  • The location of the George Washington Bridge.
  • The preservation of the Palisades and the construction of the Palisades Interstate Parkway.
  • The redevelopment of Governors Island, through the RPA-led coalition Governors Island Alliance.
  • The establishment of urban national parks like the Gateway National Recreation Area in Jamaica Bay.
  • The revitalization of the regional centers like Downtown Brooklyn, Newark, NJ and Stamford, Connecticut.

    • References

    Regional Plan Association Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA