RPA Plan2 Urban Design Manhattan 030 Access Tree Diagram

Nov 1968

The Second Regional Plan

At a time when wealthier white residents were leaving cities for the suburbs, RPA’s Second Regional Plan focused on the need to invest in urban centers and transit, and to reign in sprawl. 

This video was produced by Nate Dorr and RPA and aired during the RPA Centennial Assembly on May 6, 2022 to commemorate the organization’s 100th anniversary.

1968 Plan2 Books
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Publications

Plan2 Public Participation in Regional Planning
The spark which ignited the public consultation process described in this report was a suggestion by a distinguished advisory committee to the Harvard economic studies at its final meeting on June 30, 1959. The Committee recommended that Regional Plan take all its findings to a broader public than the Association had ever before reached, including use of edu­cational television. This concept was pressed forward by Amory H. Brad­ford, then…
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Plan2 Public Services in Older Cities
We interpret the report’s major recommendations in this way: Investment in public services devoted to improving conditions for the poor should be more than doubled in order to break the cycle of poverty which tends to keep the children of the poor as dependent and impoverished as their parents were - an increase nationally in governmental expenditures from $11.5 billion in 1967 to about $26.5 billion (in 1967 dollars). In the New York Region’s…
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Plan2 Waste Management
While this is a preliminary study, focused mainly on developing a procedure for waste management analysis, some tentative conclusions emerge. Even without added population, upward trends in per capita waste generation and increasing public demands for improved environmental quality-particularly the cutting down of air and water pollution will require much greater attention to waste management. However, the potential for improving waste…
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Plan2 The Regions Growth
This report projects key characteristics of the New York Metropolitan Region to the year 2000: population, jobs, households, and incomes. It also places the growth of the New York Region in the context of urbanization in the world and in the Atlantic Urban Region (the eastern seaboard between Washington and Boston).
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Plan2 The Lower Hudson
This staff report is the first of several dealing with environmental quality. It explores urban design principles through which man-made development and natural beauty can be combined successfully. While the Lower Hudson is a unique area in the Region, the approach to the problems and opportunities there is applicable to other old industrial riverfronts ripe for redevelopment.
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Plan2 Jamaica Center1
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…
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RPA Plan2 Urban Design Manhattan Page 075
The accelerated growth of cities and the constant need for expanded business space have become characteristic of all highly developed economies and will remain a continuing factor in the urban environment everywhere. How to accommodate this growth efficiently, gracefully, and with concern for human values is the challenge which this book seeks to explore. Urban Design Manhattan, prepared by Rai Y. Okamoto and Frank E. Williams, Urban Design…
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RPA Plan2 The Future of Westchester County RPA Plan2 The Future of Suffolk County RPA Plan2 The Future of Nassau County RPA Plan2 The Future of Morris County RPA Plan2 The Future of Middlesex County RPA Plan2 The Future of Fairfield County RPA Plan2 The Future of Orange County RPA Plan2 The Future of Bergen and Passaic County
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Public Participation

Second Plan Movie Stills

To create the Second Regional Plan, RPA used then cutting edge technology – television – to expand the public planning process. Here are frames from two short movies illustrating mobility options.

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Legacy of the Second Regional Plan

MTA Logo

Traci Lawson

Jersey City Waterfront

A. V. Flores

Stamfod Connecticut

J. J. Bers

Gateway Park Sign

National Park Service

Acknowledgements

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