"Analyzes how the structure of government in the San Francisco Bay Area complicates efforts to address the region's housing shortage and identifies options for reform, drawing larger lessons about the dangers of fragmented local authority"--
Authoritative and multidisciplinary in approach, this Research Agenda shapes questions that will underpin future legal and empirical scholarly inquiry on zoning and land use regulation in the US. Building on existing debates and providing a comprehensive overview of the current state of academic research, it identifies the gaps which need addressing in future research.
Urban sprawl is one of the key planning issues facing many US cities, leading to the creation and adoption of a variety of approaches to control growth. However, many growth management ideas do not align well with the growth-promoting planning traditions of the US, which historically have been dominated by the concerns of the market, the landowner and the developer. Illustrated by a study of the San Francisco Bay Area, this book puts forward an innovative theoretical approach to growth management, analyzing it as a tool for controlling land use expansion in the US. This region makes a particularly useful study as it has encountered long term growth pressures, complex land use demands and the application of a wide variety of growth management approaches over the past few decades. Using empirical, qualitative analysis, the book examines which growth management activities have actually been put into practice and which have proved successful and questions how such a planning approach functions in today‘s complex and multi-faceted planning paradigms. It concludes by stressing the different notions of interdependence in growth management: regional interdependence, interdependence between stakeholders and interdependence in planning theory.
Drawing on previously unavailable archives, Paying the Toll describes the high-stakes struggles for control of the Golden Gate Bridge, and offers a rare inside look at the powerful and secretive agency that built a regional transportation empire with its toll revenue.
Based on cases and interviews in Britain, Europe and the United States, this book explains the recurrence of regional planning and of initiatives in regional governance, in a wide range of advanced industrial countries. Providing an analysis of the nature of regional planning and governance, the book traces the development of regional planning and the institutions associated with it. It also looks at the way that regions have been changing their form under pressure from economic and political developments and examines how regional planning and governance has responded, comparing experience in the UK, the rest of Europe and the US. In concluding that regionalism is an imperative feature of politics in most countries, associated with almost any of the variety of forms of governance, the author offers a major appraisal of the significance of regional planning in an intemational context
With the demise of the Old Regionalist project of achieving good regional governance through amalgamation, voluntary collaboration has become the modus operandi of a large number of North American metropolitan regions. Although many researchers have become interested in regional collaboration and its determinants, few have specifically studied its outcomes. This book contributes to filling this gap by critically re-evaluating the fundamental premise of the New Regionalism, which is that regional problems can be solved without regional/higher government. In particular, this research asks: to what extent does regional collaboration have a significant independent influence on the determinants of regional resilience? Using a comparative (Canada-U.S.) mixed-method approach, with detailed case studies of the San Francisco Bay Area, the Greater Montreal and trans-national Niagara-Buffalo regions, the book examines the direct and indirect impacts of inter-local collaboration on policy and policy outcomes at the regional and State/Provincial levels. The book research concentrates on the effects of bottom-up, state-mandated and functional collaboration and the moderating role of regional awareness, higher governmental initiative and civic capital on three outcomes: environmental preservation, socio-economic integration and economic competitiveness. In short, the book seeks to highlight those conditions that favor collaboration and might help avoid the collaborative trap of collaboration for its own sake. More specifically, this research concentrates on the effect of bottom-up, state-mandated and functional collaboration, the moderating role of regional awareness, governmental initiative and civic capital on environmental preservation, socio-economic integration and economic competitiveness. In short, the book seeks to understand whether and how urban regional collaboration contributes to regional resilience.
Bringing together the thoughts of outstanding contributors, Regional Politics presents a comparative study on the emerging regional nature of local and urban politics. Recent studies tend to focus on the politics and power of internal cities or on suburban areas that have gained incredible strength in the past decade. However, this important volume explores how politics work in the extended metropolis or "functional city"--which includes and surrounds the urban core and whose economy, society, and politics are integrally joined. Contributors center on detailed case studies of 10 cities with a look at the development of regional patterns, an analysis of the impact regionalism has on urban politics, and an outline for an overall approach. The comprehensive and state-of-the-art expertise presented in this volume makes Regional Politics ideal for planners, policymakers, academics, researchers, and students in the areas of urban politics, state and local government, and public policy.
How could Northern California, the wealthiest and most politically progressive region in the United States, become one of the earliest epicenters of the foreclosure crisis? How could this region continuously reproduce racial poverty and reinvent segregation in old farm towns one hundred miles from the urban core? This is the story of the suburbanization of poverty, the failures of regional planning, urban sprawl, NIMBYism, and political fragmentation between middle class white environmentalists and communities of color. As Alex Schafran shows, the responsibility for this newly segregated geography lies in institutions from across the region, state, and political spectrum, even as the Bay Area has never managed to build common purpose around the making and remaking of its communities, cities, and towns. Schafran closes the book by presenting paths toward a new politics of planning and development that weave scattered fragments into a more equitable and functional whole.
As global warming advances, regions around the world are engaging in revolutionary sustainability planning - but with social equity as an afterthought. California is at the cutting edge of this movement, not only because its regulations actively reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also because its pioneering environmental regulation, market innovation, and Left Coast politics show how to blend the "three Es" of sustainability--environment, economy, and equity. Planning Sustainable Cities and Regions is the first book to explain what this grand experiment tells us about the most just path moving forward for cities and regions across the globe. The book offers chapters about neighbourhoods, the economy, and poverty, using stories from practice to help solve puzzles posed by academic research. Based on the most recent demographic and economic trends, it overturns conventional ideas about how to build more livable places and vibrant economies that offer opportunity to all. This thought-provoking book provides a framework to deal with the new inequities created by the movement for more livable - and expensive - cities, so that our best plans for sustainability are promoting more equitable development as well. This book will appeal to students of urban studies, urban planning and sustainability as well as policymakers, planning practitioners, and sustainability advocates around the world.