Fourth Regional Plan for New York
Core idea
Equity, climate, new governance
Why it matters
Current strategy for a 23-county megaregion
Description
The Fourth Regional Plan, published in 2017 by the Regional Plan Association, is a non-governmental long-range strategy for the tri-state New York–New Jersey–Connecticut metropolitan region of some 23 million people. Continuing the RPA's sequence of regional plans begun in 1929, it sets out proposals on housing affordability, transport modernisation, climate adaptation and institutional reform, including restructuring the region's transit governance. Its core themes are equity, health, prosperity and sustainability across a 23-county megaregion.
Significance
The plan carries the authority of the longest-running regional planning tradition in the United States, whose earlier plans shaped the region's highways, parks and transit debates across the twentieth century. The Fourth Plan is notable for foregrounding equity and climate adaptation as organising principles rather than afterthoughts, and for arguing that governance reform is as critical as physical investment — a framing influential in current American regionalism.
What shaped it
- The Just City (Fainstein) (2010)
- Urban resilience (2013)
- Paris Climate Agreement (2015)
- Environmental justice (1982 / 1991)
Sources
- https://rpa.org/work/reports/the-fourth-regional-plan
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Plan_Association