Economic globalization and postmodern urbanization in the 21st century are prompting in a new geographical entity throughout the world—the megaregion. A megaregion consists of two or more metropolitan areas linked with interdependent environmental systems, a multimodal transportation infrastructure, and complementary economies. Many agree that megaregions concentrate people, jobs, and capital and play a decisive role in the increasingly competitive global economy. Observing this trend, the Regional Plan Association (RPA 2006) has advocated a megaregion approach, that is, spatial development at the megaregional level, as a useful scale for national planning. Megaregions can enhance current metropolitan and city level planning for economic development, infrastructure investments, environmental protection, and rural and urban land uses. The megaregion approach is also provocative and visionary answers to growing problems such as congestion, development disparity, and air pollution that are facing individual metropolitan areas or cities but are unlikely to be solved by each individually.
The Texas Triangle is one of the ten emerging megaregions in the continental U.S. initially identified by the University of Pennsylvania with RPA and the Lincoln Institute (Carbonell and Yaro 2005). It is geographically encompassed by the metropolitan areas of Dallas/Fort Worth, San Antonio/Austin, and Houston. This paper presents a further study of the Triangle by addressing two questions:
1) Is the Texas Triangle an integrated megaregion (or will it be) or is it only a geometric coincidence?
2) What are the implications for planning and policy making from a megaregion approach for the Triangle?