Jamaica Center

One of the main policies emerging from Regional Plan Association’s work toward a Second Regional Plan is the recommendation that activities which draw people from relatively long distances should be grouped close together in a planned relationship to each other and to transportation - a new version of ​“downtown.” Large centers of office jobs, higher education, major shopping, health services and entertainment will be needed in many parts of the New York Metropolitan Region as it grows from today’s 19 million people to the 30 million estimated for the year 2000.

In 1967, a group of Queens County leaders who had heard Regional Plan’s concept of centers and that Jamaica was considered a likely place for one asked that Jamaica be studied as a prototype of the concept for the Region’s ​“Core” (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Hudson County and the City of Newark). This is the report of that prototype study.

This exploration of a new center at Jamaica - its potential, what it could be like, and steps needed to attain it - is one of the staff studies for RPA’s Second Regional Plan.