The Healdsburg Seminar on Megaregions (Other Publications)

Discussion Papers and Summary

Publication Date: September 2007

76 pages; Inventory ID WP07RPA1; English

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Abstract

The megaregion idea owes much to Jean Gottman’s Megalopolis of 1961, which described the nearly unbroken pattern of urbanization that had emerged in the northeastern United States by that date.

A compilation of case studies on the concept of megaregions in California, the Midwest, Texas, and Western Europe, based on the latest in a series of conferences on megaregions jointly convened by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Regional Plan Association. The following four papers each deal with a particular geographic puzzle piece, but each in its own way also provides a further contribution to megaregion theory, planning, or policy development;

Callifornia: Governance for Bigger Spillovers  Teitz and Barbour focus on the large-scale infrastructure and environmental problems that have become recognized as among the most immediate applications of the megaregion concept.

Texas Triangle: Planning, Economy, Infrastructure  Zhang, Steiner, and Butler define megaregions as multiple metropolitan areas linked by environment, infrastructure, and economy. They analyze regional economic structure, citing trends of increasing interaction and integration.

Midwest: Dynamic Economic Geography  Feser and Hewings scan ten U.S. Megaregions using Isserman’s rural-urban density codes, they find only the Northeast to be dominantly urban. They contend that the megaregion concept is not merely about planning at larger scale for regions with fixed boundaries. Rather, megaregions are marked by “continually shifting geographies” and require flexibility in their planning.

Western Europe: Polycentric Processes  Taylor and Pain contribute to theory while providing an international benchmark against which to consider the U.S. megaregion cases. Following Jane Jacobs, they focus on the city as process more than as place, and posit two forms of polycentricity.