Regional planning is planning for a geographic area that transcends the boundaries of individual governmental units but that shares common social, economic, political, cultural, and natural resources, as well as transportation characteristics.
The first regional agency with planning powers in the United States
was the Boston Metropolitan Improvement Agency established in 1902.
Regional Planning
Geographically
Temporally
Analytically
RELATED MEDIA
Creating Sustainable Communities
Megaregions: Redrawing the Map of the U.S. Based on How People Actually Live
Remotely sensed satellite data is well suited to serve regional efforts for a variety of reasons:
As we look to establish sustainable societies
and as we observe the evolution of Megaregions,
regional planning is more important that ever before.
From organizations with their roots in the early 20th century,
the American Planning Association (APA) emerged with a mission to
"advance the art and science of planning and the activity of planning — physical, economic, and social — at the local, regional, state and national levels"
Current APA research projects include topics such as hazard mitigation planning and its connections with recovery planning and preparedness; regional green infrastructure planning; integrating sustainability into comprehensive plans; and megaregional issues in long-range comprehensive planning