We're sorry. An error has occurred
Please cancel or retry.
Megaregions and America's Future
Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Couldn't load pickup availability
-
17 March 2022

“[This] visionary book provides a high-level map that charts a path through a set of daunting challenges, imagining step-by-step the choreography of reconfiguring, and thereby renewing, the landscape of great swaths of the country. And it suggests how, based on our experience as a nation in extricating ourselves from previous difficulties, we can experiment our way through necessary changes and develop the necessary institutional structures to implement them.”
— Journal of the American Planning Association
Megaregions can help the United States contend with its mega-challenges. With shared economies, natural resource systems, infrastructure, history, and culture, these linked networks of metropolitan areas and their hinterlands—such as the Southwestern Sun Corridor or Great Lakes—can strengthen climate resilience, natural resource management, economic competitiveness, and equity at the local, regional, and national levels in the United States.
This source book provides updated demographic, economic, and environmental information on U.S. megaregions for urban and regional planners, policy makers, academics, and decision makers in transportation, environmental protection, and development agencies. The book reviews the origins of the megaregion concept and the economic, ecological, demographic, and political dynamics. Readers will understand trends, processes, and innovative practices within and between megaregions and identify the most pressing challenges that demand strategic decisions and actions.
Robert D. Yaro is professor of practice emeritus in city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania.
Ming Zhang is professor of community and regional planning at the University of Texas at Austin and director of the USDOT University Transportation Center: Cooperative Mobility for Competitive Megaregions).
Frederick Steiner is dean and Paley Professor of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vii
Foreword xiii
PART I: SETTING THE CONTEXT
1 Introduction 3
2 U.S. Megaregions 21
PART II: U.S. MEGAREGIONAL TRENDS AND THREATS
3 Rising Inequality and Declining Affordability 67
4 Competitiveness of U.S. Megaregions 103
5 Building Environmental Resilience and Ecosystem Services 127
6 Changing Work and Travel Patterns in U.S. Megaregions 146
PART III: UNLOCKING THE ECONOMIC POTENTIAL OF MEGAREGIONS
7 The Green Mega Deal 171
8 A Strategic Plan for the Northeast Megaregion 206
9 High-Speed and High-Performance Rail 242
10 Governing U.S. Megaregions 267
PART IV RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT
11 Reflections 285
12 Megaregions and the Next “American Century” 303
Acknowledgments 307
References 309
Index 327
About the Authors 349
About the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 351