Part I Progressive Roots
- Applying scientific principles, industry helped satisfy material wants: Boardman, P. 90.
- elite of "social" scientists promoted the reorganization of public and private institutions: Lubove, p.14. Boardman, p. 99.
- cities drew up plans for segregating land uses and instituted the first zoning: Scott, p. 193.
- Suburban growth in 1920s left many problems unaddressed including mounting highway congestion: Scott. p.209.
Practical Needs
- a long-running dispute between New York and New Jersey over rail freight business: Doig, p.36.
- the Port of New York Authority set about developing a comprehensive plan: Lesser, P.31.
- major cities in the U.S. initiated similar "comprehensive" regional plans: Scott, p. 213.
- the Port Authority was blocked in implementing many elements of its plan: Lesser, P. 33.
- Thomas Reed, in 1925 contended that the only way to insure effective regional planning was …: Scott, p. 225.
The Great Depression
- Where toll or other dedicated funding sources were available… selected infrastructure projects … were built: Lesser, p. 36-37.
- The federal government, for its part, carried the torch of regional planning forward … in the 1930s: Scott pp. 300-305
- Tennessee Valley Authority: Hall, p.161.
Sidebar: Mixing Science and Utopia
- Early practitioners sought to put city planning on the same footing as the "scientific management": Scott, p. 117. Lubove, p. 14.
- "garden" cities, surrounded by "greenbelts": Hall, p.93.
- "balanced urban communities within balanced regions": Mumford, p. 401.
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History of MPOs - Part II
Preparing a New Future
- planning for a new post-war America became a national preoccupation: Scott, pp. 397, 404
- NRPB… urged a "comprehensive" approach to post-war planning that would make use of surveys and community forums and recognize "the interrelatedness of problems….": Krueckeberg, p. 164.
- the alliances paid little heed to urgings of NRPB for comprehensive planning: Scott, pp.413, 435.
- General Motors’ "Futurama" exhibit and highway plans : Scott, pp.361, 440.
Suburban Land Rush
- The national housing agency estimated that five million new housing units were needed immediately…: Wright, p. 242.
- the developers sought to attract veterans…and middle class urban dwellers: Wright, p.248. [many developers also implemented racially discriminatory covenants which were not outlawed until 1968: Wright, p. 248]
- Levitt was producing one four-room house every 16 minutes: Wright, p. 252.
- three-fifths of all new housing in the late 1940’s was built in the suburbs. Scott, p. 452.
- Frank Lloyd Wright put it bluntly: "The urbanite must either be willing to get out of the city…": paraphrased in Owen, p. 22.
Federal Planning Aid
- Lewis Mumford, surveying the growing chaos in many areas, termed it "the suburban fallout …": Scott, p. 504
- urban planning professor Robert Mitchell argued that such planning aid was needed to build "awareness that central cities and suburbs are interdependent…: Scott, p. 499.
- new agencies… were hamstrung by their inability to directly shape local government land use policies: Scott, p. 513.
- Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, which purchased all the town’s vacant, developable land: Scott, p. 508.
Interstate Highways
- on the scale of 60 Panama Canals: Scott, p. 537 - many local officials found new cause to embrace cooperation through metropolitan planning agencies: Scott, p.536.
- Interstate the Act did not require routes to conform to metropolitan plans: Scott, p. 539.
- "the development of regional mass transportation by helicopter or convertiplane may provide the longer distance commuting services…": Owen, p. 159.
- Robert Moses …lashed out at "ivory tower planners": Scott, p. 403. Three-C Planning - "a legion of bulldozers gnawing into the last remaining tract of green between the two cities": Editors of Fortune, p. 115.
- "three-C" planning: Weiner, p. 41.
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Three-C in Practice
- following the adoption of the 1962 Act… metropolitan planning bodies were created across the country: Scott, pp. 585-86
- the three-C planning requirement was seen by these highway interests as "a potentially disruptive innovative force…": Morehouse, p. 167.
1960s Progress
- Johnson noted that … metropolitan planning was needed to "teach us to think on a scale as large as the problem itself…": Scott, p.611.
- urban riots -- showed that narrow, technical approaches to problems could neglect critical social factors: Scott, p.619.
- the bulk of staff resources, engineering expertise and political influence needed to see plans through to implementation continued to reside in state bureaucracies. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, pp.72-73.
- key decisions on transportation and other policies were made in state capitols: Morehouse, p.164. Harrigan, p. 332. Scott, 606.
Sidebar: 1960s Regional Planning Acts
1960s Regional Planning Acts: Weiner, pp. 39-84. History of MPOs
- Parts III & IV
Highway Resistance
- "no way that highway planners could avoid stepping on an extraordinary number of toes.": Altshuler, p.40.
- better organized and more aggressive community organizations: Altschuler, p. 41. - "advocacy planners" lent their expertise:Harrigan, p.327.
- "urban freeways could only relocate congestion…": Norton., P.5.
- Overtime, some new highways even compounded congestion: Lewis & Sprague, P. 11. - "Congestion rises to meet road capacity.": Leavitt, p.38.
- Lower Manhattan Expressway…was disapproved by the city officials in 1969. Leavitt, p.64.
- a "Riverfront Expressway,"in New Orleans was killed: Leavitt, p. 90 and U.S. Senate, 1972, p..489.
Environmental Hurdles
- NEPA requirements: Weiner, p. 83
- Earth Day was a"truly astonishing grassroots explosion.": Envirolink web site.
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Search for Solutions
- legislation began to encourage more cost-effective and "multimodal" approaches: see Weiner, pp. 87, 89 &119; and Altschuler, pp.7 & 342.
- completing favored highway projects was still at the top of their agenda: Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. p. 77; and Lewis and Sprague, p. 11.
Balance Shift
- "Highway interests... guarded the Highway Trust Fund against diversion…":Smerk, p. 75. - Tom Wicker argued against urban highway projects: Wicker.
- the bill was a major political defeat for the highway lobby: Altschuler, p. 38. MPOs Funded
- ten years later most regional agencies were serving only an advisory role: Harrigan, P. 332-3
- MPO planning "merely as an exercise in meeting federal requirements…": U.S. Department of Transportation. 1977, p.51.
- federal officials pushed to strengthen regional planning: U.S. Department of Transportation, 1972, p. 322.
- Many saw the new MPOs as a means to counter the…influence of state transportation departments: U.S. Senate Public Works Committee Hearing.1972. Testimonies by: Barbara Reid, Environmental Policy Center. P. 867 and Donald Spaid, Amer. Inst. of Planners, P.566.
Oil Shock
- "Erratic deliveries of gasoline caused localized supply shortages…": Kunstler, p.109.
MPO Planning
- final rules governing MPOs were issued in 1975: Weiner, p.126.
- Associations of state and county officials reacted angrily to the authority accorded to MPOs: U.S. Department of Transportation. 1977, p.9.
- only a tiny portion of highway funds ever found their way to mass transit projects: USDOT, 1977, p.73.
- California's efforts to reserve a highway lane for buses and car pools was met with outrage: Jackson, P.251
- programs to encourage car pooling rarely attracted more than one percent: Altshuler p.150.
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Crisis of Confidence
- transportation planning had become too complex and cumbersome to effectively address many pressing needs: Weiner, p.171-2; and USDOT (Transportation Taskforce…), p. 18.
- "the American spirit of optimism seems to be suffering a brownout..": Roberts. p.1
New Deal Undone
- "a maze interlocking jurisdictions … confronts average citizens…": Reagan, p.1. 38 of 39 federal programs …were terminated… Quoted in Gage, p.208
- MPO capital planning came to "basically confirm what is going on in the fragmented region…": McDowell, p. 132; Lewis & Sprague, p.17.
Boom Times
- Companies were…banding together in Transportation Management Associations: Weiner, p. 190.
- In New Jersey, headlines during 1985 told the story of the development boom: Sternlieb & Schwartz, bibliography
- "rush hour traffic has gone from free-flow to gridlock conditions…": Cervero xxi
- "No one's out there trying to hang politicians yet…": cervero 12
New Federal Focus
- the annual miles of vehicle travel grew 30 percent: Lewis & Sprague. p.6.
- Traffic management strategies… tended to diminish over time. Lewis & Sprague. p.40f.
- "I am totally…committed to developing a national transportation policy.": Cushman.
- Republicans sought to break the deadlock over amendments to the Clean Air Act: Bryner, Chapter 3.
ISTEA
- Surface Transportation Policy Project…urged Congress to emphasize the needs of people: Lewis & Sprague, P. 11-12
- ISTEA’s new funding programs provided greater flexibility: Weiner. p.240-51 - A Senate Committee report confessed…: U.S Senate. 1991, P. 1.
- TIP could no longer contain "wish lists"…Lewis and Sprague, p.27,29.
New Relationships
- planning process that is "more rational than political," GAO, p.5
- Testimony was presented at Federal hearings… USDOT,1997. p 16 - there is consensus … that ISTEA is heading in the right direction: USDOT,1997
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Sidebar: ‘Holistic’ Regional Planning
- "sagebrush subdivision, coastal condomania …": quoted in Bianco, p. 9. - Metro… uses controls over growth to minimize sprawl: Portland Metro web site
- Another national model… is the Metropolitan Council covering the Twin Cities: Twin Cities Metropolitan Council web site
- The Twin Cities… facing competition from sprawl development that has "leap frogged": McDonnell
Sidebar: Energy Crisis II
- Carter vowed to make energy conservation the "moral equivalent of war.": Quoted in Altschuler. p.124.
- Throughout the nation, gas prices climbed over $1: various New York Times articles, 1979 adjusted for inflation, gasoline is even cheaper than it was in the 1950s: Salpukas.
Sidebar: Suburban Futures
- Critics of Garreau …question whether it can be, or should be, sustained: see for instance McGovern, p.18.