Smart Growth in a Changing World

One of President Barack Obama’s signature projects in his Economic Stimulus package is high-speed intercity rail. This is the book that explains why connecting cities in the same region make so much sense. Smart Growth in a Changing World is one of the few recent books on the phenomenon of the mega-region. Not since Jean Gotman’s (1961) study Megalopolis has there been such a convincing book on the multi-city region. The editor, Jonathan Barnett, has written five of the nine chapters, most of which deal in one way or another with the nine mega-regions identified in the US. This fact-packed APA (American Planning Association) volume asks the reader whether lay professional or academic—to consider two major propositions. The first is ‘smart growth’ at the scale of the mega-region, and the second is the need for a national urban policy. With 70% of the country’s population increase and 80% of its economic growth projected to be in these nine regions, the mega-region is becoming an increasingly functional and coherent unit of urbanization. If the considerable political jurisdictional hurdles can be cleared, it may even come to replace the metropolitan region as the economic engine in the global economy (although politically and administratively it is still in its infancy). If mega-regions are to coalesce and succeed, better infrastructure for the intercity transportation of goods and people is essential. This mandate is what inspired Obama to sponsor inter-city rail, which may jumpstart a more overt and formal national urban policy under his administration. Professor Barnett and APA Executive Director Paul Farmer, the two most eloquent rhetoreticians among the half dozen contributors, make a compelling case about the dire consequences of continuing the last 150 years of decentralization and the last 75 years of suburban development in America. Indeed, the underlying structural problem that the book confronts is the fact that the American metropolis has been spreading out and diluting itself in low-density sprawl at a considerably faster rate than its population has been growing. Barnett points out that, since global warming has become the alpha environmental issue, the stakes are dramatically higher than when his late University of Pennsylvania colleague Ian McHarg authored the seminal Design with Nature 40 years ago. His chapter on the projected flooding of cities such as New Orleans, Miami and New York argues for ‘not building in harm’s way’—an Book Reviews 289