ancient cities

to find a rational distribution of population and
economic growth in each region. David Johnson
has made clear that some of these beliefs were
taken by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, including
the Tennessee Valley Authority, which included
concepts of integrated resource development and
regional planning. Another famous example for
American regional planning is the 1929 Regional
Plan of New York and Environs.
A further prominent example is Greater London.
The Greater London Regional Planning Committee
presented a regional plan in 1929 suggesting,
among other things, open-space planning, and a
“green girdle” around London for sports and
recreation. The emphasis on green returned in later
plans for the London region. Patrick Abercrombie
was the influential planner here, introducing a
green-belt ring (mainly meant for recreational use)
and an outer-country ring (mostly agriculture).
A final, but highly important set of examples
emerge from German regional planning, which
began in the early twentieth century, when larger
city growth (particularly Berlin) and the emergence
of larger industrial regions (like the Ruhr area) had
to be coordinated. Some of the first planning initiatives
included the establishment of the so-called
Greater Berlin collaboration (Zweckverband Groß-
Berlin) in 1911, which was aimed at preparing highways
and tram and railway infrastructure. For the
Ruhr area, an effort was made to identify regional
problems like natural protection, disordered settlements,
and conflicts between residential and industrial
land uses. A special organization was set up, the
Siedlungsverband Ruhrkohlenbezirk, in 1920.
Regional Science and
Economic Geography
In the period after World War II, regional planning
became less a matter of regional urban form and
environmental concerns. Instead, more prominence
was given to regional economic geography.
Authors like John Friedmann, William Alonso,
and Walter Isard discussed economic issues related
to regional development. Issues like the location of
industry were central to Alfred Weber’s least cost
approach. Notions on the spatial structure of
regions were given by Walter Christaller in his central-place
theory. Another characteristic approach
was the locational rent notion by Johann Heinrich
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von Thünen. The central idea was that the cultivation
of certain crops depends on their distances
from the city and that this could be calculated
through assessments of the cost of the land and
transport costs. These approaches have been criticized
for their economic modeling and assumptions
such as singular linkages between a city and
its agricultural area or that the cost of transport
would be directly proportional to distance.
Regional planning efforts based on early regional
science involved studying causalities between physical,
social, and economic variables in a regional context.
The emphasis relied strongly on quantitative
methods. It also often implied primarily a governmental
activity aimed at the scientific production
and review of a regional plan, applying regional
development theories. France has a particularly
rich history in a regional economics approach to
planning, principally in the 1960s.
At a more recent date, the emphasis on economic
issues in regional planning continues to be
important. People like David Harvey and Manual
Castells have sought to add the importance of
social networks and patterns of power in regional
economic development. Regional planning clearly
includes social and political realities as well. For
example, the control of urban sprawl and mobility
is impossible without social awareness and some
form of regional political consensus about its
necessity. It implies regional coordination involving
multiple authorities and relevant stakeholders.
New Regionalism and
Metropolitan Governance
These remarks bring us to a more recent view on
regional planning, bringing issues of new regionalism
and metropolitan governance to the fore. In
essence, new regionalism claims that the regional
level is crucial for economic development and that
the region should be the prime focus of economic
policy. The idea is that nation-states are inappropriate
for economic policy as they are too small to
deal with capitalism in a global system and too
large to respond effectively to local changes.
Authors like Michael Keating have shown that, as
a consequence, the nation-state has been forced to
devolve its powers to regional bodies.
There are also some functional reasons why the
region has become central. The territorial range of