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The Roots of Sprawl: Regional Planning

One of the roots of today's sprawling development pattern can be found in the constrained role regional planning has played in much of America during the 20th century. Given the fragmented nature of metropolitan governance, implementation of regional plan policies was often difficult, at best. Moreover, for much of the century many regional plans focused on promoting, rather than controlling, metropolitan expansion.

Planning historian Laurence Gercken, in "Ten Failures that Shaped the 20th Century American City," (this article, from the Spring 2000 issue of the Planning Comm'rs Journal, can be ordered and downloaded online) notes two planning-related failures that helped foster sprawl:

  • The Lost Visision of Regional Planning. Gerckens notes that regional planning, as envisioned by its early advocates: "[W]as intended to regulate and 'nodulate' urban incursions into the surrounding countryside. By preserving broad bands of forest and farmland between urban areas, the unique life styles of city, village, and farm would be maintained." Unfortunately, as Gerckens concludes, as the century progressed regional planning turned its focus to "planning for metropolitan expansion, through the provision of large-scale transportation systems and mass recreation areas."
    -- take a look at the early 20th century vision of regional planning's role, as articulated by Benton MacKaye.

  • The Fragmented Nature of Metropolitan Governance. A related reason why planning efforts have often accomplished little in dealing with regional development is due to the diffusion of land use control among dozens of municipalities. As Gerckens observes, "Laws empowering individual communities to plan and act to fulfill their own definitions of the public interest might well have made sense at the beginning of the twentieth century when urban settlements were small and isolated from one another. But such 'home rule,' when engaged in by a plethora of communities within a metropolitan area, led to the failure to address pressing area-wide issues."

      -- Many community leaders now recognize that fragmented metropolitan governance, combined with the limited implementation powers of regional planning agencies, have made it more difficult to combat sprawl development. As former Missouri Senator John Danforth observed in a 1997 "Report to the Community" prepared by St. Louis 2004, a non-profit organization promoting regional cooperation: "Our region of 2.5 million people consists of two states, the City of St. Louis, eleven surrounding counties and a multitude of municipalities, school districts, taxing authorities and government service providers. It is a system that encourages jealousies and fosters stalemate ... A comprehensive answer to our problems of governance is probably beyond our reach, but the status quo is absolutely unacceptable."

      -- For a look at some promising efforts at regional governance, see the Sprawl Guide's section: Solutions: Regional Cooperation.