Toward an American Spatial Development Perspective

This project has been inspired and informed by recent European efforts to develop policies and investments for the entire continent and for regions that cross national boundaries. These efforts are now being organized under the umbrella of the European Spatial Development Perspective, a set of policy directives and strategies adopted by the European Union in 1999.

Over the past generation, the EU has initiated a new large-scale approach to planning for metropolitan growth, mobility, environmental protection, and economic development. Europeans use the umbrella term ​“spatial planning” to describe this process, involving plans that span regional and national borders and encompass new ​“networked cities” spread out over hundreds of kilometers. The EU is also mobilizing public and private resources at the continental scale, with bold plans and investments designed to integrate the economies of, and reduce the economic disparities between, member states and regions, and to increase the competitiveness of regions and the whole continent in global markets.

By contrast, the United States has no national plans or strategies to anticipate and manage comparable concerns. Unlike Europe, US population is expected to grow to 430 million by 2050, a 40 percent increase over current levels. Consequently, in less than 50 years we will need to build half-again as much housing and as much commercial development and infrastructure as we have over the past two centuries.

How can this growth be accommodated in metropolitan regions that are already choking on congestion and approaching build-out under current trends and policies? How can we improve the competitiveness and livability of our own emerging constellation of networked cities? How can the United States reduce the growing disparities in wealth and population between fast growing coastal regions and vast interior rural areas and declining industrial cities? How can the federal government promote creation of regional strategies designed to address these concerns?

This process was initiated through a graduate planning studio at the University of Pennsylvania in the Spring of 2004. The studio’s final report provides a broad overview of both the challenges facing the country between now and 2050, and the elements that might be included in a national spatial development strategy. The Studio’s work was directed by Robert Yaro and Jonathan Barnett, both Practice Professors in City and Regional Planning at Penn, and Visiting Professor Armando Carbonell. Yaro is also President of Regional Plan Association, while Carbonell is Co-Chairman, Department of Planning and Development, at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The Studio’s research findings are summarized in this report.