Audio recordings are now available from the forum, "Rebuilding and Renewing America: Infrastructure Choices in the Great Lakes Megaregion" held on November 17 by Chicago's Metropolitan Planning Council and New York's Regional Plan Association.

The purpose of the forum was to identify and prioritize strategic investments in transportation, water, and energy infrastructure to be included in a national infrastructure and economic stimulus plan.

View a slide show of the event. 

Audio recordings were made by Chicago Amplified, a web-based audio archive of Chicago Public Radio. All recordings were made November 17, 2008 at the Chicago Hyatt Regency. The recordings include:

Opening Plenary Session with speakers MarySue Barrett, Robert Yaro,  Anne Prammagiore, Canadian Minister Peter Gordon MacKay,  U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, U.S. Rep. Tom Petri, and John McCarron.

Roundtable on Transportation, featuring Petra Todorovich, Maureen McAvey, Rob Puentes, Ilana Preuss, and Michael McLaughlin

Roundtable on Water, featuring Al Appleton,  Samuel Speck, Deborah Shore, MaryAnn Dickenson, Katherine Baer, and Cameron Davis

Roundtable on Energy, featuring Catherine Morris, Sadhu Johnston, Kyle Barry, Wally Tyner, Anne Evens, and Val Jensen

MPO Collaboration in the Great Lakes Megaregion, featuring Randy Blankenhorn, Steve Ernst, Chester Jourdan, Terry Kohlbuss, Tony Reams, John Swanson, David Warm and Robin Snyderman.

Report Out and Closing Remarks, featuring MarySue Barrett, Catherine Morris, Al Appleton, Petra Todorovich, and Bob Yaro

Featured speakers included U.S. Representatives Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Tom Petri (R-WI) and Canadian Minister of Defense and Minister for the Atlantic Gateway, Peter Gordon MacKay. Download the Agenda

This forum was organized locally by the Metropolitan Planning Council and nationally by the Regional Plan Association, which is grateful for funding support from the Rockefeller Foundation, Surdna Foundation, and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
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Two recent editorial pieces from cities as disparate as Columbus, Ohio and Houston, Texas call for a federal commitment to de-clog our airports and highways with long-term investments in high-speed intercity rail.  Proponents in Texas argue that state officials need to move beyond 20th century policies and not to sell short on the state's transportation system in the 21st.  Both pieces argue that high-speed rail has shown benefits in improving a nation's carbon foot print, and help to relieve congestion at major airports, especially for short-distance intercity travel.  They conclude that it is time to provide Americans with a safe and reliable transportation network that includes intercity rail.

Read the Columbus Dispatch piece here.

Read the Houston Chronicle piece here.

Nine Midwestern governors and the premier of Manitoba, Canada met November 16 to sign a regional greenhouse gas reduction accord, which will create a multi-sector cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases. This multi-state agreement joins similar efforts, such as the 10-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the Northeast and the 5-state Western Climate Initiative Partnership that includes California, New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon and Washington.



In the absence of national leadership, these large regions (in the Northeast and Midwest they correspond with the geography of the megaregions) have set their own goals for greenhouse gas emissions and are in the process of developing cap-and-trade programs. Does the multi-state or megaregion framework lend itself to climate change leadership? The governors may be motivated by the positive peer pressure of their neighboring states and a similar set of energy and climate conditions born by their proximity that allow for setting comparable targets. In any case, we are encouraged by the leadership and collaboration of these groups of governors and hope it will set a precedent for collaboration on other pressing issues.

Some of these governors also produced a commercial sponsored by Environmental Defense urging congress to take action on the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill. View the commercial on YouTube above.

A recent report (updated) released by the Brookings Institution addresses the question: "what are healthy Great Lakes worth to the regional and national economies" and the potential return on investment from restoring the Great Lakes ecosystem.  The study analyzes the direct relationship between environmental quality and economic benefits to the entire Great Lakes region.  Conducting a benefit-cost analysis, the authors claim that the gains from investing in the environmental infrastructure in the Great Lakes are impressive.  The efforts undertaken thus far have been a Presidential Executive Order, an EPA-led task force establishing a Great Lakes Regional Collaboration, a Great Lakes restoration process, legislation introduced in Congress to implement and fund the strategy, and more.

The report also highlights several impediments to the Great Lakes region; a decreasing population, low educational attainment, lack of entrepreneurial activity and others.  The study suggests that the federal, state, and local governments must play a very significant role in revitalizing the region.

The result of the $26 billion revitalization strategy over several years would result in the following benefits, as reported by the authors' analyses:

• Over $50 billion in long-term national benefits
• $30 - $50 billion in short-term benefits regionally
• Development of new environmental and biodiesel technologies and alternative energies.

 

*note: Click here to access the unpublished version of this report which contains additional economic data from the study.

image: Diane McCarthy, tigger.uic.edu/~diane/

 

 

Regional Plan Association and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy convened scholars and planners at a research seminar in Healdsburg, California last April to explore an emerging urban form: the megaregion. Megaregions are networks of metropolitan areas linked by economic and trade relationships, transportation infrastructure, large natural systems, and growth concerns. First identified as "megalopolis" in the 1960s, the Northeast Megaregion, from southern Maine to northern Virginia, presents the most recognizable example of this urban form. The report includes four scholarly papers examining case studies of megaregions in California,Texas, the Midwest, and Western Europe. Read the press release.
Download the full report (15 MB)
Download the report in sections:
Cover and Table of Contents (6 MB)
Introduction by Armando Carbonell
Megaregions in California: Challenges to Planning and Policy by Michael Teitz and Elisa Barbour (2 MB)
Connecting the Texas Triangle: Economic Integration and Transportation Coordination by Ming Zhang, Frederick Steiner, and Kent Butler (5 MB)
U.S. Regional Economic Fragmentation & Integration: Selected Empirical Evidence and Implications by Edward Feser and Geoffrey Hewings (1 MB)
Polycentric Mega-city Regions: Exploratory Research from Western Europe by Peter Taylor and Kathy Pain (.5 MB)
Summary of Meeting (.6 MB)

The American Planning Association's National Conference this April 14-18, 2007 in Philadelphia will include a special track on, "Megaregions, Sustainability and Transportation," featuring multiple sessions planned by or including America 2050 project partners.

Some of the highlights inlcude sessions on: Megaregions and a National Transportation Agenda; Building Economic Synergies in Megaregions; and Cross-Border Challenges in International Megaregions. Several sessions will focus on specific areas of the country, such as: Booming Sunbelt Megaregions and Reimagining the Midwest Megaregion. 

For more information on the APA National Conference click here.

To explore the sessions in the Megaregions track on the APA website, visit this link, then select the Track "Megaregions, Sustainability and Transportation" from the pull down menu and leave "all" in the Topic field.