Jonathan Barnett - Designing the Megaregion: Meeting Urban Challenges at a New Scale

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Copyright 2020 by Jonathan Barnett

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Keywords: climate change, ecoregion, geographic information systems (GIS), inequity, land use planning, landscape scale, natural disasters, natural environment, passenger rail, real estate development, transit, transportation, urban resilience, zoning

Chapter 1
A New Scale for Urban Challenges

Chapter 2
Recognizing Ecoregions as the Context for Development

Chapter 3
Relating Development to the Natural Environment

Chapter 4
The Northeast Megaregion: Prototype for Balanced Transportation

Chapter 5
Progress Toward Fast-Enough Trains in Megaregions

Chapter 6
Achieving Balanced Transportation in Megaregions

Chapter 7
Inequities Built into Megaregions

Chapter 8
Reducing Inequality in Megaregions

Chapter 9
Adapting Governmental Structures to Manage Megaregions

Chapter 10
Rewriting Local Regulations to Promote Sustainability and Equity

Conclusion
A Design Agenda for Megaregions

During the past few decades, a phenomenon of urbanization has become more widely observed by academics and urban-policy experts. Around the world, big cities and their large urban and suburban regions are growing together with other metropolitan areas, forming massive conglomerations. These megaregions are capturing much of the world population and economic growth.

Meanwhile, megaregions have attracted the attention of planners, designers, and engineers who view this scale as potentially helpful for addressing challenges that go beyond city limits, such as transportation systems and environmental quality.

In Designing the Megaregion, esteemed educator and practitioner Jonathan Barnett addresses these two major foci of megaregions but takes on several related topics as well. First, he is more explicit about the need to design megaregions. In this regard, Barnett goes beyond the more common planning and policy approaches. Second, he introduces the potential role of ecoregions. In doing so, he reinforces the interactive natures and potentials of megaregions. Third, he addresses the issues of inequalities within and beyond megaregions and identifies ways to address them. Finally, he takes on how to adapt government structures to megaregions and how local regulations can be regeared to promote sustainability and equality.

The American economist and political scientist Herbert Simon noted, To design is to devise courses of actions aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. Barnett illustrates how megaregion-scale design can help improve human lives for the better. He suggests that such design can occur incrementally. Theres much to juggle, so tackling bits while keeping in mind larger systems, processes, and goals is wise. The adjustment to climate change is related to reducing the congestion of roadways and to making communities more inclusive. In all design, Barnett notes, the variables are interrelated.

Barnett makes a strong case that one should start with preventing people from settling in stupid places. That is, we should not be allowed to live or work or send our children to school in places that endanger our health, safety, or welfare or that of our loved ones. And, by the way, it is even stupider to rebuild and finance living in places of risk after they have been destroyed by natural or human-assisted disasters.

After we have set aside natural areas that contribute to our well-being (and that of other species too), we can design the elements of our settlement. A promise of the megaregional scale is more effective, what Barnett calls balanced, transportation. In the United States, the transportation system is out of balance with an overdependence on cars and trucks, which results in increasingly congested roadways and contributes to global warming.

In balanced transportation systems, various modeswalking, biking, driving, riding, flyingare connected thoughtfully and more equitably. As Barnett notes, the national highway system in the United States is largely responsible for megaregions. Inadvertently, interstate highways also resulted in left-behind places. Air travel has likewise created flyover regions.

Barnett advocates megaregional design as a strategy to fix inequalities. For instance, balanced transportation systems improve connections between where people live and where they work. This is especially important for the lower-income people. Likewise, the design of communities to reduce threats of natural disasters from flooding, wildfire, and storm surge benefits the poor, the disabled, the elderly, and the young.

The accomplishment of megaregional design requires the adaptation of existing government structures and the renewal of city policies. One way for governments to adapt is to cooperate. Barnett notes several examples in the United States where jurisdictions collaborate across river basins. These agreements have flood-control, drinking water, water-quality, and recreation benefits. And Barnett indicates that transportation planning is already regional. The challenge is to broaden such cooperation beyond water management and highway building.