The first Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs included Fairfield County, CT in its analysis of the region’s demographics, population distribution, economic conditions, land utilization, transportation, natural features, and other characteristics. Daniel Sanford, the Vice President of the Fairfield County Planning Association, was a mainstage speaker at the unveiling of the Regional Plan in May 1929. Connecticut also sent multiple delegates to the event, including the state Board of Education, the Bridgeport Chamber of Commerce, the Greenwich Borough Government and Chamber of Commerce, the New Canaan Town Government, and the Stamford Town Plan Commission. Partners like these have been integral to our work throughout the tri-state region.

In the 1930s, Connecticut was represented on RPA’s Board of Directors by Thomas Crimmins and Thomas Holden of Darien, John Sinclair of Riverside, George Waldo of Bridgeport, and Paul Windels of Southport. Paul Windels also led RPA as its President during the 1940s and 1950s and spent much time in Darien before he passed away at the age of 82 in Norwalk.

In its early years, RPA helped local governments establish planning boards to advise on development decisions. RPA also published county-specific brochures on the benefits of the first Regional Plan.

In the 1950s and 60s, RPA identified a rapid increase in lot size requirements that was spreading housing and scattering non­residential development. Open land would be urbanized at a breakneck rate, a 1962 study showed. RPA discouraged such development in Connecticut and elsewhere in the region, writing:

“In the spread-city decreed by present zoning, people will be living and working too far from each other to use public transportation or to walk to most places they want to go, or even to car-pool. … Choice of housing types and lot sizes also is restricted by present zoning. Young people starting adult life and older people whose children have grown cannot find suitable housing in suburbs restricted to one-family homes on large lots, where they may have lived most of their lives… By spreading and scattering rather than concentrating jobs, goods, services, and homes, we fail to build communities, and we have poorer access to and so less choice of jobs, friends, recreation, goods, services, types of housing, and modes of travel.”

RPA’s 1962 report also noted that Fairfield County had some of the largest lot sizes in the region, at an average of 59,000 square feet, and over 87% of its vacant land was zoned for half-acre lots or larger.

In addition to encouraging development in city centers such as Stamford, RPA also warned that Connecticut and the region were in danger of decline due to racial and economic segregation. Published in the 1970s,​Segregation and Opportunity in the Region’s Housing was a major research effort which demonstrated that regional segregation was the result of racial discrimination rather than income differentials between White and Black Americans. The study reported that discrimination was a major reason why two-thirds of Black families in the region were confined to about 1.35% of the residential land. Solutions RPA proposed included creating a region-wide network of housing counseling, information, and referral services, strengthening both public and private fair housing organizations at the county level, and continued development of a regional design for more compact urban settlement.

“A broad form of racial discrimination involves restrictive land use policies which deny lower-income and minority families access to suburban communities. Here, the concern is not with individual cases but with the discriminatory effects of government regulations at the municipal or county level. .. Exclusionary land use policies are reformed not only when zoning ordinances are overturned but when additional units are actually built to create open housing…. In Connecticut, attempts to end ​‘multi-acre zoning in rich towns’ have been less successful than elsewhere in the region.”

To address these and other issues, in the 1970s, RPA launched its Connecticut Committee, made up by civic, business, and non-profit leaders, and in the 1980s, it launched Fairfield 2000, a citizen effort to initiate solutions to clear and present problems. Fairfield 2000 was coordinated by the RPA Connecticut Committee and a dedicated steering committee, and involved over 800 individuals in various task forces. Stakeholders that supported the project included Connecticut Governor William O’Neill and many municipal officials. Fairfield 2000 Homes Corporation was created as a result of this effort, which was a separate entity that worked to build housing in Connecticut.

Priorities for the group included supporting the economic revitalization of Bridgeport, cleaning the Long Island Sound and increasing public access to it, developing and protecting public greenways, providing more social services and better access to the arts, creating better transportation systems and more transit-oriented development, and having a more practical planning process.

Key to that was better approaches towards housing and neighborhood planning. Fairfield 2000 conducted surveys and found that a majority of respondents in Fairfield County, 71%, said the shortage of low- and middle-income housing was a major problem, and 85% said housing cost was a major problem. Though 71% felt that,​“decisions about what housing should be provided should be strictly a local matter,” 66% felt the state,​“should regulate local zoning to make sure that towns are not overly restricting the amount of affordable housing.” 67% agreed all towns should be required to provide at least a minimum amount of low-income housing.

Fairfield 2000 recommended a variety of solutions to the housing crisis, including rezonings and accessory dwelling units. It also flagged the need for individuals in Fairfield County to think outside the confines of municipal boundaries.

“The Community Values Task Force raises questions for readers to ask themselves about social responsibility across municipal lines. They urge a series of steps to increase recognition that Fairfield County is a community to which residents belong and for which they should be responsible. They also raise questions about who is included in our concept of community, reminding us that much if not most of the population and labor force growth will be Black and Hispanic and Asian.”

Many of the recommendations made by the Fairfield 2000 project were later incorporated in the Third Regional Plan.

RPA’s work in Connecticut continues. In the last two decades, RPA has assisted with the Stamford Master Plan, advocated for transit-oriented development with a report on municipal readiness for TOD, called for specific investments in rail in our widely shared Getting Back on Track report, and called for better bus service in our Missing Links report. We have also been strong advocates for trails along the Merritt Parkway and connecting Connecticut to the rest of the region, and have warned against the impacts of climate change and rising sea levels as well as housing unaffordability and displacement of residents.

In creating the recommendations for our Fourth Regional Plan, published in 2017, RPA worked with many Connecticut stakeholders, including organizations like Partnership for Strong Communities and Make the Road Connecticut.

More recently, RPA joined Fairfield County’s Community Foundation, Supportive Housing Works, and Partnership for Strong Communities to launch Fairfield County’s Center for Housing Opportunity, a coordinated, regional response to address the shortage of essential, affordable housing in Fairfield County, CT. Working with FCCHO, RPA published several reports on the housing crisis, including the Fairfield County Housing Needs Assessment and Be My Neighbor in Fairfield County. In addition, RPA recently partnered with the State of Connecticut’s Department of Housing to publish the Planning for Affordability in Connecticut guidebook to help municipalities across the state create local affordable housing plans now required by state statute. RPA also works with our FCCHO partners to support Fairfield County Talks Housing, a series of town hall-style, resident-led conversations that have been held virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic. During 2021, more than 800 residents throughout Fairfield County and beyond joined the webinar series to learn about how housing impacts local communities.

In addition to our work with FCCHO, we have also been active partners with and the fiscal sponsor for Desegregate CT, a coalition of neighbors and non-profits advocating for more equitable, affordable, and environmentally-sustainable land use policies in Connecticut. In 2021, Desegregate CT successfully advocated for statewide land use reforms including allowing accessory dwelling units as of right in all single-family zones and capping costly parking mandates. This legislative success represents an important start in addressing exclusionary land use policies and practices, which RPA has been focused on in Connecticut for over fifty years.

RPA is proud of our long history in Connecticut. We look forward to continuing our research, planning, and advocacy work in the state and to show that in the Land of Steady Habits, change is possible and necessary in order to meet the needs of all residents.