Regions, Megaregions, and Sustainability

Abstract

Wheeler S. Regions, megaregions, and sustainability, Regional Studies. The rapid expansion of urbanized regions is problematic for sustainable development. Urbanization at large scales has inherent sustainability problems, and planning institutions and governance mechanisms have had limited success at the metropolitan scale, let alone at a megaregional one. A vision of more sustainable regional development includes an emphasis on balanced local communities to reduce regional mobility demands; the management of land, resources, and population to live within regional limits; efforts to improve equity and build social capital; and on economic development that strengthens the quality of the region's social and ecological systems rather than the quantity of production and consumption.

Wheeler S. Régions, mégarégions et durabilité, Regional Studies. L'expansion rapide des régions urbanisées est un problème pour le développement durable. L'urbanisation à grande échelle induit des problèmes inhérents de durabilité et les instances de planification ainsi que les mécanismes gouvernementaux ont connu un succès limité à l'échelle métropolitaine sans parler du niveau mégarégional. Une vision du développement régional plus durable nécessite de mettre l'accent sur l'équilibre des communautés locales afin de réduire les demandes en mobilité régionale, la gestion des terres, les ressources, le souhait des populations de vivre à l'intérieur des limites régionales, des efforts pour améliorer l'équité et construire un capital social; il faut mettre l'accent sur le développement économique qui renforce la qualité des systèmes sociaux et écologiques de la région plutôt que sur la quantité de la production et de la consommation.

Planification régionale Région Mégarégion Métropole Durabilité Développement durable 

Wheeler S. Regionen, Megaregionen und Nachhaltigkeit, Regional Studies. Die rasche Expansion urbanisierter Regionen ist für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung problematisch. Eine großflächige Urbanisierung ist mit inhärenten Nachhaltigkeitsproblemen verknüpft, wobei die Planungsbehörden und staatlichen Kontrollmechanismen aber auf metropolitaner Ebene bisher nur wenig Erfolg hatten – von der megaregionalen Ebene ganz zu schweigen. Eine Vision einer nachhaltigeren Regionalentwicklung ist verknüpft mit einer Betonung von ausgeglichenen lokalen Gemeinschaften zur Verringerung des regionalen Mobilitätsbedarfs, mit einer Steuerung von Land, Ressourcen und Bevölkerung für ein Leben innerhalb der regionalen Grenzen, mit Bemühungen zur Verbesserung der Gerechtigkeit und zum Aufbau von Sozialkapital sowie mit einer Betonung einer Wirtschaftsentwicklung, die die Qualität der sozialen und ökologischen Systeme der Region stärkt, statt die Quantität von Produktion und Konsum zu steigern.

Regionalplanung Regionen Megaregionen Metropolitan Nachhaltigkeit Nachhaltige Entwicklung

Wheeler S. Regiones, megaregiones y sostenibilidad, Regional Studies. La rápida expansión de regiones urbanizadas es un problema para el desarrollo sostenible. La urbanización a gran escala presenta problemas inherentes de sostenibilidad y las instituciones de planificación y los mecanismos de gobierno tienen un éxito limitado a nivel metropolitano, no digamos ya a escala megaregional. Para obtener un desarrollo regional con una visión más sostenible se debería dar prioridad a las comunidades localmente equilibradas para reducir las demandas de movilidad regional, a la administración de las tierras, los recursos y la población que vive en límites regionales; a los esfuerzos para mejorar la igualdad y crear capital social y a un desarrollo económico que refuerza la calidad de los sistemas sociales y ecológicos de la región en vez de centrarnos en la cantidad de producción y consumo.

Planificación regional Regiones Megaregiones Metropolitano Sostenibilidad Desarrollo sostenible 

Keywords:

• Regional planning
• Regions
• Megaregions
• Metropolitan
• Sustainability
• Sustainable development

JEL classification:

• R
• Y
• Z

INTRODUCTION

The region is a vitally important scale to sustainability planning. It makes sense to consider many planning challenges at a regional scale since they are regional in nature and cross the boundaries of local jurisdictions. At the same time regional planning has lagged behind the need for such solutions. There are some success stories to be sure, but in terms of dealing with sustainability concerns such as greenhouse gas emissions, resource consumption, growing motor vehicle use, ecosystem health, metropolitan growth management, and disparities of wealth and social equity, regional governance has made relatively little headway, particularly in North America.

Part of the problem is institutional. Agencies often do not exist to plan for many types of regions, for example bioregions, watersheds, commutesheds, economic regions, or cultural regions. If they do exist, such institutions are frequently weak. But part of the problem, as will be shown, is that urbanization at ever-larger regional scales presents inherent difficulties in terms of sustainable development. This point has not been sufficiently appreciated to date.

Past regional planning initiatives have most often occurred at a metropolitan scale, a level at which many planning institutions exist with clearly defined boundaries. Urbanization processes are also frequently studied at a metropolitan scale. However, in recent years it has been proposed that urbanization is now occurring at an even larger scale: that of the megaregion or megapolitan region (Carbonell and Yaro, 2005; Lang and Dhavale, 2005; Dewar and Epstein, 2006). Megaregions consist of a number of metropolitan areas linked by proximity and some shared characteristics. They are seen as the locus of much future development. For example, approximately three-quarters of the US population and employment growth by 2050 is expected to occur in eight to ten megaregions (Dewar and Epstein, 2006).

The following text explores the sustainability and governance difficulties of development at metropolitan and megaregional scales, considers the success of some regional sustainability planning initiatives to date, and reflects on the implications of sustainability theory for regional planning.1 The aim is to help develop a vision of planning for sustainable regions, and to insert a note of caution into discussions of rapid regional development, since urbanization at these scales may be inherently more difficult to make sustainable than more locally oriented development. The primary focus of this analysis is North America, but regional planning in other parts of the world is considered as well.

SUSTAINABILITY IMPLICATIONS OF EXPANDING URBAN REGIONS

Rapid growth of urban regions, and coalescence of cities and towns into ever-larger regions, has been a fact of life worldwide for much of the past century. Much planning aims to accommodate or promote this trend. Regions can be a source of great dynamism and initiative; however, their growth is problematic for sustainable development in a number of ways that differ from similar growth contained within more localized communities.

The mobility issue

One basic problem is that integration of human activities over a regional scale assumes a high degree of mobility within the region. As labour and housing markets become regional in nature, travel distances lengthen, just as they lengthened at an urban scale within the growing 19th-century industrial city (Cervero, 1998, 26ff.; US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), 2001, 19ff.). These distances increase not just for work trips, but for a great variety of household, social, and recreational trips as well (Grava, 1999). More transportation infrastructure is required, and extensive use of private motor vehicles for commuting within the metropolitan area or megaregion produces traffic congestion and high levels of resource consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Although European nations might be able to meet much regional transportation need through integrated transit systems, and developing nations may meet it through a combination of public transit, ride sharing, and informal transit providers, in virtually every society the use of private motor vehicles is also growing, in part due to the dispersion of destinations throughout urbanized areas.

At the megaregional scale, air travel comes into play, as well as the long-distance regular motor vehicle use known as extreme commuting. Increasing numbers of workers routinely travel between cities several hundred miles apart, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco in California, Paris and Berlin, and Boston, New York and Washington on the eastern seaboard. Many individuals and families regularly travel similar distances to vacation homes or recreational amenities, as, for example, many British residents now travel to vacation homes in Spain. Although high-speed rail is frequently mentioned as the ideal form of megaregional transportation, the reality in most places is that much of this travel will be by either private motor vehicle or air. Air travel, especially for short-to-medium-range trips, has by far the largest impact on global warming per mile travelled of any transportation mode (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 1999, p. 8), and the climate change impacts of regular air travel within or between megaregions will be severe.

Reducing mobility needs and the use of highly polluting transportation modes at either metropolitan or megaregional scales will not be easy. Three types of strategies will be needed: increasing mode choice, changing land use, and revising economic incentives. All are difficult to implement at large scales.

Making public transit a widely used mode choice at a metropolitan scale may be virtually impossible in areas with low densities and dispersed land-use patterns; at the least it would require massive investment in transit systems. At a megaregional scale, improving mode choice would require extensive networks of high-speed rail that only Europe and Japan have developed so far. Changing pricing is difficult politically at both levels, as shown by strong resistance to gas taxes many places. In terms of land use, compact, centred, balanced, and contiguous development of communities is usually seen to help reduce the use of motor vehicles (Ewing et al., 2002), though the debate is complex and nostalgic or simplistic views of the compact city are best avoided (Breheny, 2003; Neuman, 2005; Jenks et al., 1996; Frey, 1999). But changing land use is not easy in areas used to sprawl development, especially without strong regional governance to regulate land use.

The reality is that without major changes in planning, politics, and lifestyle it will be very difficult for urbanizing regions to avoid a high level of private motor vehicle use and air travel, with their attendant sustainability impacts.

Land and resource issues

A related set of problems in expanding urban regions worldwide concerns the use of land and resources (Wannop, 1995; Daniels, 1999; Ewing and Kostyack, 2005). In the European Union, the amount of urbanized land is expected to double in this century, and suburban sprawl is seen according to a recent European Union report as an under-recognized challenge that ‘threatens the very culture of Europe’ and ‘seriously undermines efforts to meet the global challenge of climate change’ (European Environmental Agency, 2006, p. 5). In the USA, the amount of urbanized area around metropolitan areas is expanding at an extraordinarily rapid rate. Other research has found that for six sample US metropolitan regions (Boston, Massachusetts; Atlanta, Georgia; Minneapolis-St Paul, Minnesota; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Portland, Oregon), the amount of urbanized land area increased by 57% in the 1980–2005 period alone (Wheeler, 2008). This study also found that the most rapidly growing type of development within these regions, in terms of land area affected, is rural sprawl; that is, low-density subdivision with lot sizes of 1 acre or more. This form of development is difficult for local governments to service and often has disruptive ecological effects in that roads, fences, and developed lots interfere with wildlife corridors and habitat.

Such rapid development across regions is exacerbated by the current emphasis on mobility, and in turn requires high levels of motor vehicle travel from future residents, leading to increased fuel consumption and emissions. Resources such as water, forests, and high-quality farmland are also frequently overtaxed within rapidly growing regions. Water, for example, is one of the leading development challenges in urbanizing areas worldwide in terms of supply, quality, and control (UNESCO, 2006; Barlow and Clarke, 2003). Forests are frequently depleted near urban areas, especially in the developing world. Limits on consumption of many resources are avoided only by importing them from other places, but such imports have their own eventual limits.

Management of such resources at a megaregional scale often requires coordination over multiple states or countries as well as hundreds of local governments. Some state planning in the USA and national planning elsewhere aims at growth management objectives, but usually only for part of a megaregion. New Jersey, for example, has pursued statewide open space preservation planning, but only represents a portion of the US eastern seaboard conurbation.

Equity issues

Equity issues, both within and between regions, have been exacerbated in recent years by the increasing size and fragmentation of these areas. Of particularly concern are the concentration of poverty within parts of the region, growing disparities in tax base and opportunity (Pastor et al., 2000), and environment justice inequities (Bullard et al., 2000). Using geographic information systems (GIS), Myron Orfield has documented large and often increasing disparities in wealth, poverty, and tax base within US metropolitan areas (Orfield, 1997). Segregation by income grew substantially within these metro regions in the late 20th century, even as segregation by race declined slightly (Abramson et al., 1995). Interestingly, spatial concentration of the wealthy may be even higher than concentration of the poor and ethnic minorities (Massey, 1996), suggesting ongoing class segregation.

Within megaregions, disparities may be increasing between more dynamic and less dynamic sub-areas, for example between wages on California's coast and in its Central Valley (Drennan and Manville, 2006). Meanwhile, to the extent that megaregions are serving as the economic engines of national development, an unfortunate by-product appears to be increasing disparities between these megaregions and other less fortunate areas within countries (Dewar and Epstein, 2006).

In the rush for economic competitiveness, equity concerns often take a back seat within regional planning. There is little organized constituency for them, as there is for economic development. Rast (2006, p. 249) criticizes recent regionalism as exhibiting ‘a profound suburban, middle-class bias’ because it does not sufficiently emphasize participation by low-income, minority, and central city constituencies, and because it often focuses on regional economic competitiveness that benefits elites while not necessarily improving the welfare of lower income groups.

Social and community issues

Having a metropolitan or megaregional scale as the dominant focus of 21st-century urbanization raises profound questions about local community, identity, and sense of place. In the past, small-scale development has often been equated with the human scale. Lewis Mumford railed against ‘gigantism’ and ‘megalopolis’ in publications such as The Culture of Cities (Mumford, 1938) and The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (Mumford, 1961). Jane Jacobs celebrated the small-scale life of urban places in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jacobs, 1961). E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (Schumacher, 1973) articulated a philosophy of appropriate-scale development that is still seen today in new forms such as micro-lending and pedestrian planning. The older, small-scale places that such writers idealized are still some of the most popular communities to visit or live.

Emphasis on ‘sense of place’ throws into question the move towards ever-larger scales of regional development, which are frequently less tied to local place and tradition. Sense of place in fact is undermined by the particular urban form patterns that regional urbanization is currently taking. The relatively connected 19th-century metropolis has morphed into the physically fragmented 21st-century post-modern region. Recent forms of development such as subdivisions, office parks, and shopping malls are inwardly focused with few physical connections to surrounding land uses (Southworth and Owens, 1993; Wheeler, 2003). Although journalist Joel Garreau hypothesized the emergence of relatively compact ‘edge cities’ within the spread-out metropolis (Garreau, 1991), the reality in many cases is low-density non-centred spread (Lang, 2003; Lang et al., 2006). This fragmentation of form and land use in suburbia may well be tied to the decline of social capital; Robert Putnam identifies a ‘sprawl civic penalty’ of 20% on most measures of community involvement (Putnam, 2000, p. 215).

It is certainly possible that local identity can thrive within a world dominated by global forces, as advocates of ‘glocal’ approaches argue (e.g. Featherstone et al., 1995; Borja and Castells, 1997; Bauman, 1998). But the balance is not an easy one, and the risk is that global forces will be dominant within large urbanized regions, while the local context is given little attention. Development of regional malls, for example, provides a locus for global networks of supply and consumption within the metropolitan area and is made possible by the creation of regional infrastructure such as freeways that opens up broad markets to retailers. Regional ‘power centres’ with their ‘category killer’ stores drive more locally based retailers out of business, promote standardized products and lifestyles, and contribute little to the locality in terms of character, wealth, and identity.

The economic development issue

The type of economic development promoted by ever-larger urbanized regions is yet another sustainability concern. Sprawling metropolitan areas often consist largely of low-density and discontiguous communities, with few prominent downtown areas or neighbourhood centres – what Lang (2003) has termed the edgeless city. This land-use pattern works against small-scale local businesses and in favour of strip development or big box retail along arterial roads or freeways (Schlosser, 2001). The chain retailers that dominate such landscapes are problematic in terms of sustainability, as seen by recent controversies surrounding Wal-Mart and McDonald's. Boosterish regional development policies are problematic in that they focus on multinational industrial employers who often demand exorbitant subsidies, pay low wages, relocate jobs elsewhere over time, contribute little to civic life, and damage the environment (Shuman, 2000). Historically, many urbanists and sustainability advocates have viewed smaller, locally or regionally based businesses within more traditional urban contexts as advantageous in terms of their effects on local communities (Jacobs, 1961, 1969; Morris, 1982; Beatley and Manning, 1997).

THE ONGOING STRUGGLE OF REGIONALISM

Although metropolitan and megaregional sustainability planning will be very much needed in the future, especially if these regions continue to grow, the track record of action at such scales is not promising. Regional planners historically have had great difficulty in seeing their proposals implemented. Nineteenth-century predecessors of regional planning such as Ildefons Cerda (in both his larger philosophical proposals and elements of his plan for the extension of Barcelona, Spain) and Frederick Law Olmsted and his two sons (in their large-scale proposals for metropolitan greenspaces systems) had limited success in persuading authorities to implement their visions. Portland in Oregon, for example, has only in the past few decades developed a greenspaces system inspired in part by the 40-mile loop of parks and parkways first proposed for it more than a century ago by the Olmsted Brothers (1904).

Simmons and Hack (2000) identify Burnham and Bennett's Plan of Chicago of 1909 as the first comprehensive plan for a modern city region, but implementation of this celebrated proposal was only partial as well, consisting mainly of the lakefront portion of the park system. In Britain, Ebenezer Howard's garden city vision was never carried out in a way that included his concerns for collective land ownership and local employment, although it did help inspire the Abercrombie Plan for London of 1944 and the creation of transit-oriented New Towns. Patrick Geddes's holistic approach to regionalism was admired in theory, but largely ignored in practice by later practitioners, as was the closely related ecological regionalism promoted in the USA by Mumford and the Regional Plan Association of America (Sussman, 1976; Luccarelli, 1995).

The pragmatic metropolitan regionalism exemplified by Thomas Adams and the Regional Plan for New York and Its Environs (Regional Plan Association, 1929) has had somewhat greater success than more visionary regional philosophies, particularly within regional transportation planning. However, in practice such plans have often degenerated into lists of infrastructure improvements that are undertaken piecemeal. In many places traffic congestion and housing difficulties have persisted or worsened following such initiatives. Extensive freeway building around the world's metropolitan areas, for example, has often fuelled suburban sprawl, increased congestion, and worsened air quality. Even while regional planning theory in the USA aimed for ever-more-comprehensive strategies during the 20th century, few regional agencies had significant statutory authority to plan, and in practice the field has often characterized by ‘pervasive ineffectuality’ according to urban historian Robert Fishman (Fishman, 2000, p. 108).

Since the 1980s there has been an upsurge of interest in metropolitan regionalism in the USA as well as in other countries (Downs, 1994; Weitz and Seltzer, 1998), and greater incorporation of environmental, quality of life, and equity issues into a regional agenda often dominated by economic development. This resurgence has sometimes been referred to as the ‘new regionalism’ (Wheeler, 2002). In ways reminiscent of early 20th-century regionalism, late 20th-century writers often took holistic views of the region and emphasized the role of spatial planning (Banai, 1993). New understandings of the importance of regional design have also taken hold, integrating neo-traditional and humanistic urban design approaches at site, neighbourhood, district, city, and regional scales (Neuman, 2000; Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), 2000; Duany et al., 2000). The vision of the transit-oriented metropolitan area promoted by Peter Calthorpe in The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community, and the American Dream (Calthorpe, 1993), Calthorpe and William Fulton in The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl (Calthorpe and Fulton, 2001), and in a different way by Robert Cervero in The Transit Metropolis: A Global Inquiry (Cervero, 1998) stem in part from this more urban-design-oriented perspective. Although economic development goals remain a central theme of regionalism, especially in Europe (Danson, 2000), the agenda of regional planning in North America has shifted towards what Savitch and Vogel (2000) describe as a ‘new metropolitan agenda’ focusing on:

tax sharing among localities, limiting sprawl, building affordable housing in the suburbs, revitalizing the core central city, and fostering sustainable economic growth and development.

(p. 198)

Yet although metropolitan regionalism appears to be on the upswing, it is still a weak level of government in most places, and it is far easier to analyse city regions than to plan for them. In his review of global cities, Mark Abrahamson concludes:

Although metropolitan areas are now the economically most important subunits within nation-states, and contain a large percentage of the total population, it may be difficult to envision them becoming more significant political entities any time soon because metropolitan governance is so poorly developed. In most of the world's largest metropolitan areas, city-suburban integration is limited to a few functional areas, such as coordinated transportation.

(Abrahamson, 2004, p. 169)

STRUCTURAL OBSTACLES TO REGIONAL PLANNING

To a large extent the problems with regional governance are institutional and political in nature and stem from the position of regions in the hierarchy of governmental institutions, the fragmentation of jurisdictions and communities within the region, and fierce political resistance to many forms of planning, especially those involving land use, within capitalist economies.

The metropolitan region is generally seen as an in-between level of government, without strong support from above or below (Self, 1982; Sharpe, 1995; Altshuler et al., 1999). Regional agencies often serve at the whim of higher-level government, which tends to be reluctant to part with power and can capriciously dissolve or reorganize them, as Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government dissolved the Greater London Council in 1986, and the Province of Ontario amalgamated Metro Toronto out of existence in 1998. Meanwhile, local governments may bitterly resent metropolitan agencies, especially in nations with a strong tradition of local control over land use such as the USA. Local elected officials have little political incentive to collaborate regionally, and tend to resist any loss of local power. Many citizens also do not think regionally or have a cognitive sense of what the region consists of (Lynch, 1976).

Fragmentation of the metropolis into often-competing jurisdictions and communities undermines attempts at unified planning, and is exacerbated by large regional size and population. Such fragmentation of governance is one of the dominant features of the post-modern metropolitan landscape in North America (Danielson and Doig, 1982; Barlow, 1991; Kling et al., 1991; Rusk, 1993; Lewis 1996; Dear, 2000; Orfield, 2002). The number of local governments in US metropolitan areas has proliferated as suburban jurisdictions have resisted annexation and incorporated to preserve their identity, protect the tax base, or keep out urban constituencies. In the absence of strong regional government, it becomes very difficult to coordinate action across hundreds of local government bodies. Such problems are even more severe at the megaregional scale, as megaregions may overlap states and nations. Within fragmented regions, competition for economic development and the tax base also frequently set local governments against one another and undercut environmental, land use, or social equity regulation. This problem is particularly acute in places such as California where state limitations on local use of property taxes have led to competition for sales tax revenue and a resulting fiscalization of land use in order to lure sales tax-generating businesses such as auto malls and big box stores.

The sheer size of contemporary metropolitan areas makes political organizing and coalition building, particularly along the lines of traditional grassroots politics increasingly difficult. Much political discourse must of necessity be conducted through the media, which requires different tactics and is often difficult for non-governmental organizations to access. Participatory planning, consensus building, and social learning become problematic as well.

Resistance to planning of any sort tends to be expressed particularly vigorously at the regional level, particularly when growth management initiatives threaten to interfere with capitalist land development. To many elites and members of the public, regional planning has less clear justification than local government (which provides basic services) or state and national governments (which have a deeply rooted historic basis). Growth coalitions often channel this public resistance to planning through sympathetic local officials to undermine regional initiatives.

A further set of difficulties has to do with deeply rooted institutional and social capital deficits within particular regions. As Putnam argues in his study of social capital in Italy, those differences may go back many hundreds of years and be extremely difficult to change (Putnam, 1993). In this way, the current difficulty in rebuilding New Orleans in Louisiana may be partly due to the long-term dysfunction of politics and institutions in that metropolitan area, not to mention broader biases in US society against low-income groups and communities of colour (Davis, 2006).

The history of regional planning itself may be an impediment to more successful regionalism in some places. Many single-purpose metropolitan agencies have been created with specific, limited mandates and little incentive to think holistically. This ‘silo-based’ regionalism may work to administer single-issue functional planning, for example to develop transportation systems, but works less well at developing broader regional sustainability agendas or addressing concerns such as equity that present no pressing functional demands on the region. At a more philosophical level, there is also a tension between the detached, scientific approach of the past regional studies field, within which many current regionalists were trained, and the need for more politically engaged regionalism in order to bring about sustainable development (Counsell and Haughton, 2006).

REGIONAL SUSTAINABILITY PLANNING TO DATE

Although sustainability language has been present within many regional planning documents for some time (Gibbs, 1998), and there is evidence that many regional plans are making an effort to integrate environmental, economic, and social objectives as called for by much sustainable development philosophy (e.g. Dühr, 2005), effective implementation of metropolitan or megaregional sustainable development policies has been limited in most parts of the world and faces substantial challenges.

Within the USA, regionalism of any sort remains an uphill battle. Portland in Oregon remains the best-known US metropolitan regional planning jurisdiction on the strength of its directly elected Metro Council, its urban growth boundary (UGB), and successful downtown revitalization, green spaces, and transit initiatives. Planning institutions in the Portland area have been refined for more than 40 years (Abbott, 1983; Seltzer, 2004), and a culture of planning created (Abbott, 1997). The region even appears to be making some progress on global warming; per capita emissions declined by 7% between 1990 and 2000 (Progressive Policy Institute, 2003). But even the Portland area has had its share of problems. The UGB was established quite far distant from the central city initially, allowing a great deal of suburban sprawl to take place inside the boundary. Somewhat belatedly, in the 1990s, Metro and local governments developed more detailed urban design regulation to try to correct this problem. While the UGB has successfully preserved agricultural land outside the boundary, leapfrog growth now threatens to escape the jurisdiction of Metro and spread to outlying towns. Vehicle miles travelled has risen faster than the rate of population (as is the case almost everywhere in the USA), and persistent questions of housing affordability and social equity remain.

Although planning initiatives have been undertaken in many other US metropolitan areas, regional governance to manage growth has usually been spectacularly unsuccessful. California, for example, has seen at least 60 years of failed attempts to manage growth regionally (Pincetl, 1994). Downs (2005) finds that smart growth has had little success in terms of implementation in the USA because of long-established traditions of local home rule and low-density land development. Planning methods such as the natural factors overlay analysis pioneered by Ian McHarg (McHarg, 1969) have been useful at the site scale and in subregional applications such as habitat conservation planning, but are rarely applied in a more comprehensive way to guide regional development.

American metropolitan governance since the 1960s has been dominated by the Councils of Governments (COGs), voluntary associations of local governments that have little or no statutory authority over metropolitan growth and development. Many of these COGs do channel federal and state transportation funds toward local projects, and under liberalized federal transportation policy since 1991 has handled these funds somewhat more flexibly to encourage alternative transit modes. But generally the COGs do not seek to challenge prevailing patterns of land development, economic development, or motor vehicle-dependent infrastructure.

Consolidation of governments within the metropolitan area has had some success in helping US city regions provide services more effectively, but has not led to stronger leadership on topics related to sustainable development. The Indianapolis-area UniGov, for example, formed through three institutional consolidations in the 1960s and 1970s, appears to have helped with downtown revitalization. However, it has not necessarily done so through progressive and equitable financing means, and has not played a substantial role in managing the region's growth, which is now well beyond the consolidated government's borders (Rosentraub, 2000). Similar city–county consolidation in Jacksonville, Florida, met the agenda of area elites in terms of improving services, but has not necessarily increased government efficiency or addressed sustainability issues (Swanson, 2000).

Single-issue regional planning has had some success in the USA, in part because the institutions involved have had more definite mandates and authority to plan. The South Coast Air Quality Management District's plans for improving air quality in the Los Angeles basin, the Tahoe Regional Commission's efforts to protect environmental quality around Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and efforts to protect environmental quality in New Jersey's Pine Barrens are examples. However, these initiatives occurred in contexts where a strong public motivation was present, and do not extend to managing overall growth and quality of life in these regions. Single-purpose regional agencies may also compartmentalize planning and work against broader development of a regional public interest (Bollens, 1997).

Sustainability planning at the megaregional scale has been even more difficult. The campaign across parts of the USA and Canada for environmental protection in the Great Lakes area, for example, has achieved some notable successes, such as establishment of a multi-institutional framework for collaboration and substantial cleanup of point-source pollution. However, the regional governance framework remains vulnerable to changing local, state, and national politics, and has yet to make headway on other problems such as non-point-source pollutants and the introduction of exotic species (Rabe, 1999).

In Canada, despite a somewhat stronger tradition of metropolitan governance, planning and development patterns appear to be converging with those in the USA (Rothblatt, 1994; Rothblatt and Sancton, 1998). Canadian regional agencies often fail to integrate different subfields of planning, and also suffer from their nature as creatures of the province (Church, 1996, p. 100). The former Metro Toronto, poster child of 1950s regionalism, served in large part as a construction agency providing roads and other infrastructure for the region, and was not able to implement broader planning initiatives such as the 1970 Toronto-Centred Region policy successfully (Wheeler, 2003). The bioregional vision for the Toronto area developed in the early 1990s by the Crombie Commission (Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront, 1992) was thwarted in part by provincial antipathy and continuing political fragmentation of the region. Over vigorous opposition the province of Ontario reorganized local governments in the Toronto region in 1998, but left it without any overall regional authority. As a result, that metro area is still struggling to find institutional foundations with which to coordinate its development.

Vancouver is a more successful example of Canadian regionalism, in large part due to the 1996 Greater Vancouver Regional District's Livable Region Strategic Plan. This plan has sought many sustainability objectives such as to solidify a Green Zone of protected agricultural areas and parks, ensure compact and balanced development, develop a regional network of urban centres supported by public transit, and build institutional partnerships to implement such objectives (Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) 1996). A detailed set of indicators has been established to monitor progress. Through 2004, implementation had achieved a number of successes. Some 53 700 hectares of land had been protected in an Agricultural Land Reserve, 762 km of greenway had been established, transit ridership was rising, the proportion of short commute trips was increasing, and 67% of new housing development was in the form of apartments or rowhouses, helping to achieve compact city goals (GVRD, 2004). However, other indicators were less favourable. Vehicle-kilometres driven continued to rise, the percentage of growth that occurred in the Growth Concentration Area was below target, and housing affordability and equity concerns remained.

In Australia, a review of sustainability initiatives at several levels of government by Smith and Scott (2006, p. 15) finds ‘legislative failure’ at Commonwealth and state levels, a lack of action at the local level, and a strong ‘silo effect’ among functional public agencies. Recent sustainability oriented metropolitan strategies for Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane offer some hope, but most implementation of such policies remains for the future.

In the UK, regional institutions have waxed and waned several times over the past century (Houghton and Counsell, 2004). In the 1990s, the national government adopted sustainability as an integrating theme for planning guidance. However, its regional planning directives have provided rather general guidance and housing targets with the aim of managing growth and improving human quality of life (following the viewpoint often termed ‘weak sustainability’) rather than more ecocentric approaches emphasizing fundamental acknowledgement of limits to economic growth and consumption (Houghton and Counsell, 2004; Glasson, 1995). Regional planning guidance does appear to have strengthened environmental management as well as stakeholder involvement in some areas (Counsell and Bruff, 2001), and the early 2000s saw an increased focus on spatial initiatives and greater attention to environmental justice (Agyeman and Evans, 2004). Many sustainable development initiatives are underway nationally and within large metropolitan areas, especially London. However, many difficulties of implementation remain.

Across Europe, there has been a resurgence of interest in large-scale regional spatial planning in recent years (Faludi, 2002; Albrechts et al., 2003; Healey, 2004), embodied particularly by the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) formulated by the European Union in 1999 (Commission of the European Communities (CEC), 1999). Sustainability is a stated goal of this and other plans, but linkages to implementation are often unclear. There seems, for example, to be agreement on the somewhat vague concept of polycentricity, which would nudge the physical structure of Europe away from a centralized constellation of cities between London, Germany, and Northern Italy, designated as the ‘blue banana’ on spatial diagrams, toward a ‘bunch of grapes’ model in which clustered development is spread across the continent (Waterhout, 2002). But how this shift would be accomplished and how it would specifically promote sustainable development remain to be spelled out.

Since the 1990s, ‘regional development’ within European Union policy has been broadened to ‘regional sustainable development’ (Ravetz, 2004). Regional policies within a number of member countries have followed suit, often focusing on particular portions of a country rather than metropolitan regions or urbanized megaregions. For instance, since 1998 sustainable regional development has been the principal goal of German spatial planning (Dühr, 2005). In France, sustainable development has likewise become a goal of regional development planning. However, French regions view sustainability largely in environmental terms, definitions and evaluation mechanisms vary between regions, public participation in developing sustainability policies is limited, and linkages to political levels are still highly uneven (Bertrand and Larrue, 2004).

There appears to be a basic tension in European countries between desires to allow regional constituencies to participate actively and develop their own sustainability agendas, and the need for national governments to establish broad policy and ensure a reasonable degree of coordination. However, in Britain the establishment of regional chambers to create sustainable development frameworks is seen by some as a valuable exercise, even though these have created divergent conceptions of sustainable regional development (Benneworth et al., 2002).

Although planning mechanisms tend to be stronger in European countries than in North America, their capacity to bring about sustainable regional development is open to question. Even in the Netherlands, regional collaboration is not as strong as might be expected. A study by Kantor (2006, p. 812) concludes that within that country competitive pressures of the global economy ‘powerfully segment and divide business, labor, and government within the region’. He points out that plans for consolidated metropolitan governments around Dutch cities have failed, and that local collaboration with the designated steering committee for the celebrated Randstad region has been sporadic. The new economy is also leading to the centrifugal spread of Dutch cities. However, at a national level – a scale that might be considered regional in many other nations – the Netherlands appears to be doing relatively well in terms of sustainability planning due in part to continual refinement of national environmental policy over several decades.

Roberts (1997) has noted that historically European regional planning has not always helped improve sustainability:

much of regional planning in the past was hijacked and forced to help deliver the products of tonnage ideology – more growth, excessive consumption, less equity and increased environmental degradation.

(p. 881)

Given the tendency of concerns about economic competitiveness to outweigh environmental and equity agendas, whether the new wave of European regionalism will be different remains to be seen. A meta-analysis of European sustainability evaluation programmes found that there is still little consensus on definitions of sustainability or means of evaluating it (Martinuzzi, 2004). More specific linkages between sustainability theory and practical application appear to be needed.

In the developing world regional expansion appears to be creating a great many sustainability problems, although a detailed analysis of these cannot be attempted here. In a study of Sao Paulo in Brazil and Beijing in China, Melchert (2005) emphasizes the extent to which large developing-world metropolitan areas are sacrificing environmental quality to gain a toehold in the global economy, and sees globalization as directly linked to the deterioration of the regional environment. In South Africa, some regional plans appear to be taking a more integrated and multi-sectoral approach with a specific emphasis on sustainability, but not necessarily with sufficiently strong environmental policies (Todes, 2004). There is some evidence that recent strengthening of metropolitan governance in a number of Asian countries is resulting in improved regional service provision, as it did in past decades in North America (Laquian, 2005). However, it is not clear that broader sustainability objectives are being achieved, and without careful mediation environmental and social objectives often conflict, for example with open spaces in or near cities being seized for informal housing (Hsiao and Liu, 2002).

All in all, we seem still far from the type of ecological planning, at either metropolitan or megaregional scales, promoted by Geddes, Mumford, and the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) in the early 20th century and optimistically foreseen nearly 30 years ago by Friedmann and Weaver (1979).

IMPLICATIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY THEORY FOR REGIONALISM

Sustainability planning can be seen as having a strong theoretical foundation rooted in ecological ways of viewing the world as opposed to the Cartesian mindset of modernist science (Wheeler, 2004, 27ff.). These theoretical dimensions have a number of implications for efforts towards regionalism.

The first main consideration is a long-term time horizon, implicit in the term ‘sustain’. Currently regional planning frameworks in North America are often twenty years; expanding these to 50 or 100 would be good. It would also be desirable for regional planners to develop and use more actively indicators showing whether the region's development is headed in sustainable directions or not in the long-term. Bureaucratic, political, and economic structures should be modified to the extent possible to encourage such longer-term thinking.

A second main implication of ecological thought is to emphasize holistic approaches, in particular interrelationships between goals (for example, the oft-cited ‘three E's’ of environment, economy, and equity), disciplines, research methodologies, analytic perspectives, scales of planning, and time horizons. Integration of regional planning topics such as transportation and land use is common in rhetoric but less followed in practice, especially in locations with single-purpose functional regional agencies. Integration of perspectives such as design and policy is difficult as well. Integration of scales is yet another challenge, one that may require the formation of new patterns of incentives, assistance, or reinforcement between institutions at different levels. Savitch (1997, p. 1) and others have termed this quality ‘institutional thickness’, defined as:

horizontal, vertical, and coalitional relationships among the private sector, mass organizations, and nonprofit and governmental bodies

(Amin and Thrift, 1994, p. 14)

identify four determinants of institutional thickness: (1) a strong institutional presence in the region (and a multitude of institutions); (2) high levels of interactions between them; (3) development of ‘patterns of coalition’ that serve to normalize constructive action, and (4) development of mutual awareness and a sense of common enterprise among participants. Many of these relationships can be facilitated or incentivized by higher levels of government. Political organizing and coalition building, both within and outside government, will also often be necessary to support effective regional action, as Counsell and Haughton (2006), Weir (2000), and others suggest.

Another consideration of sustainability theory has to do with the concept of limits. The catalytic work The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972), in which the term ‘sustainable development’ seems to have been used in print for the first time, championed this theme on a global scale. The acknowledgement of limits to regional growth might mean more vigorously managing or ending physical expansion, stabilizing population, reducing or ending non-renewable resource use, and adopting economic development policies that aim for qualitative improvement in the region rather than quantitative expansion of its output.

The importance of local and regional sense of place is a further implication of ecological thought, since sustainable solutions to problems must take context into account. Bioregional thinkers have stressed this point extensively (Sale, 1985; Hough, 1990; Thayer, 2003), emphasizing long-term relationships between human communities and their ecological contexts. Rather than continue on the current path toward a ‘geography of nowhere’ (Kunstler, 1993), regional planners and designers can highlight those ecological settings, materials, architectural styles, technologies, cultural practices, and traditions that reflect the uniqueness of the place. Kelbaugh (1997) proposes that a critical regionalism form the basis for ecological design, while Keil (1996) emphasizes the role that place-oriented politics can play in helping communities pursue sustainability planning in the face of globalization.

A final implication of sustainability planning theory is that regional planners should become more actively engaged in helping to bring about regional sustainability. Within an ecological worldview knowledge and action are part of a seamless whole. The era of the regional scientist studying the region abstractly and leaving practical action up to policy-makers is over; moral responsibility for the future of the region extends to all, especially to those with the knowledge or power to affect its development. In practice, this means a number of things. Regional scholars can proactively develop options for a sustainable future. Civic officials can take more proactive leadership to build regional vision and institutions. Planners can call attention to long-term trends, expand the range of policy options under consideration, help educate the public, and ensure that underrepresented perspectives are heard in debates.

A VISION OF SUSTAINABLE REGIONALISM

Regional sustainability planning is a tough challenge, and the trend towards ever-larger urbanized regions should be viewed with caution. Promoting the physical expansion of regions should not be a goal of national or regional planning unless steps can be taken to address sustainability problems related to mobility, growth management, equity, economic development, and governance. It is important to plan at these scales, but to promote sustainability rather than regional growth.

Despite the challenges, the preceding analysis points towards a vision of how more sustainable urbanized regions might be planned for. This model would include the following:

•	A focus on smaller-scale community development within the region, with attempts to maintain separation between local communities in terms of labour markets, housing markets, road systems, and land development. Even if the region is linked as a whole, much of life can still be local, and this approach seems the only way to deal with the inherent mobility problems of the large region. Particular incentives, such as carbon taxes or road-pricing reforms, could help discourage the public from viewing long-distance travel within metropolitan areas or megaregions as a routine part of life. More balanced land development – carefully integrating homes, jobs, and community facilities within each local place – will be essential as well.
•	Management of land, resources, and the population to live within regional limits. The current rapid physical, economic, and population expansion of urbanized areas cannot go on indefinitely, and leads to large environmental and social costs. Public discussion of long-term impacts of such trends is needed. Agencies need to develop a range of policy alternatives that can really meet goals such as managing urban growth, improving environmental quality, lowering motor vehicle use, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, stabilizing population, and ensuring affordable and resource-efficient housing. A sustainable region will be one that is in balance with its land and resources – not necessarily a static balance, but a dynamic relationship aimed at improving the quality of human and ecological systems.
•	Development of a stronger sense of regional identity and bioregional stewardship. Within a sustainable region planners and public officials would seek to enhance public knowledge about the ecology, culture, history, and identity of the region, and to awaken a deeper sense of stewardship. Ecological restoration would be an important rallying point. Preservation of cultural, architectural, and ecological landmarks would be a focus as well. Commitment to businesses that use local resources and draw upon the region's culture and traditions could be part of this effort. Fledgling efforts at megaregional identity in the Pacific Northwest are an example of some of these themes.
•	Steps to improve regional equity and social welfare. A region moving towards sustainability would take action to reduce disparities between communities in terms of income, wealth, tax base, education, healthcare, and environmental quality. Metropolitan tax sharing might well be involved, as well as changes to tax structures and strong investment in social services and education at metropolitan, state, or multi-state levels. Such steps might have to be mandated and incentivized by higher level governments.
•	Revised approaches toward economic development. A sustainable region would focus on forms of economic development that improve social and ecological welfare rather than increasing quantities of material production and consumption. Needless to say, this is easier said than done. Practical steps toward this end might include prohibitions on large-scale retail; preferential economic development incentives for smaller, green businesses; strong governmental efforts to promote reuse and recycling of products; and tougher regulation of industries and products.
•	An intergovernmental framework supporting regionalism. A more sustainable region would most likely exist within a framework in which higher levels of government require that particular sustainability goals be met and provide resources to enable this. National governments or international agencies would play an active role to overcome local or regional inertia. Ideally, local governments would learn to support regional initiatives as well, since they would presumably benefit from regional coordination and incentives. Existing single-purpose regional agencies would link up their work to create more holistic frameworks for planning within the region.
•	Regional organizing and coalition building. Robust relationships would exist between non-governmental organizations, business groups, public agencies, and other players in the sustainable region. These relationships would build social capital (Foster, 2000) and provide political support for regional sustainability planning. Particularly essential is that the business community participate in a way that addresses overall regional interests rather than a particular economic agenda.
•	New themes and leadership to galvanize the public. Appropriate themes and leadership would emerge to focus public attention on regional needs. A variety of environmental threats could be used in this way; for example, the decline of the Chesapeake Bay has led to regional watershed planning in the mid-Atlantic states. Though it must be approached cautiously, the megaregion concept is itself such a potentially useful theme to stimulate regionalism. It appears (at the moment at least) as new and newsworthy, and is being used within several US megaregions to generate support for high-speed rail. It may also be useful within regions such as Cascadia (the Pacific Northwest) for developing regional identity around ecological planning (e.g. Seltzer et al., 2005). The global warming crises may also help galvanize the public into supporting stronger planning at regional scales if it can be shown that this is a useful level at which to plan to reduce emissions or adapt to climate change.

Such motivation might be the trump card that overcomes the inherent difficulties of planning for regions and megaregions. If a perceived regional, national, or global crisis exists that can be communicated to the mass of the public and decision-makers through new leadership, then regional political and institutional gridlock can potentially be broken. Potentially, at least, regional planning can then join other levels of activity to address the threats that the current global juggernaut of unsustainable development is creating.

Notes

The term ‘region’ is used here to refer to both metropolitan areas and megaregions.