America 2050

The Summit's four roundtables - Northeast Corridor Mobility, Regional Landscapes and Climate Change, Local Government Forum on Climate Change, and Subprime Mortgage Crisis and Affordable Housing - were chaired by Jack Lettiere, Jack Lettiere Consulting, LLC and Former Commissioner of NJ DOT, Rob Pirani, Director of Environmental Programs at RPA, Armando Carbonell, Chairman, Department of Planning and Urban Form, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and Merilyn Rovira, Director of Housing and Community Development, Fannie Mae, respectively.

Baltimore, Maryland is the site of this year's Northeast Climate and Competitiveness Summit on Friday, February 29th at the historic Tremont Grand Hotel. The Summit brings together over 100 civic, business, and government leaders of the 12 Northeast states and District of Columbia to develop a shared action agenda for economic competitiveness, quality of life, and sustainability in the Northeast Megaregion.

This year's Summit will include keynote addresses by Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon. The Summit is sponsored by Regional Plan Association and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and co-sponsored by the Greater Baltimore Committee, Select Greater Philadelphia, The Chesapeake Crescent Initiative and the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at University of Maryland.

Download the Agenda and Overview

Click here to read about last year's Summit, including presentation and summary notes.

Click here for directions to Tremont Grand Hotel

In the coming months the Alliance is focusing its efforts on shaping Amtrak legislation in the House that will serve as the companion bill to the recently passed Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act in the Senate. 

To join the Business Alliance's email list, email Petra@rpa.org

Photo: Boston; Karusel/flickr.com

"What if New York City..." is a call for innovation and an opportunity for designers and policy-makers to collaborate on one of the biggest challenges facing densely settled urban areas after a disaster: how do we keep people safely and comfortably housed while reconstruction proceeds?

A jury of experts in the fields of architecture, design, urbanism, and government will choose ten entrants who will be awarded $10,000 each and technical support to develop their proposals into workable solutions. These solutions will provide support for New York's most vulnerable communities and be a precedent for dense urban areas all over the world.

The Baltimore Business Journal recently outlined the efforts of a coalition working to promote public transit over highway projects.  MOREtransit, Movement of Organizations for Regional Expansion of Transit, is pushing to transfer funds from roads to mass transit.  Currently, Outlook 2035, the plan of the Baltimore Regional Transportation Board, a division of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, emphasizes highway expansion. 

The transportation board is planning $2 billion for transit projects, and $6.2 billion for highway.  MOREtransit is proposing the following amendments, which it presented this week at a board meeting:

        • $3 billion for regional rapid transit system
        • $550 million new passenger rail tunnel connecting Penn Station and West Baltimore
        • $488 million for MARC Penn Line improvements
        • And $200 million for MARC Camden Line improvements.

In addition, MOREtransit also proposes decreasing highway funding by more than $2 billion, while budgeting more than $60 million for bike and pedestrian projects.  The organization is working to integrate and expand the current system, while also making major improvements within the region as well as improve connections to the Northeast Corridor.

Photo: David B. Davies

While airlines are running later and with more delays than ever -- a third of flights arrived late at La Guardia Airport between June 1 and Aug. 15, according to Flightstats.com -- Acela's performance is improving. The train is running on time 88% of the time, so far this year -- up from 84% a year ago. It was 90% on time in June. With Amtrak selling every seat on some Acela trains in peak travel periods, Amtrak recently added another weekday Acela round trip between New York and Washington to keep up with growing demand. The new train dropped all but one stop, Philadelphia, shaving 15 minutes off the normal 2¾-hour, five-stop New York-Washington trip.

A spokeswoman for JetBlue Airways Corp., Forest Hills, N.Y., says it's wrong for tax dollars to be used to subsidize Amtrak passenger trains "when a modernized air-traffic-control system is not yet in place or even funded."

On June 26, the House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials held a hearing on Benefits of Intercity Passenger Rail. Gov. Mark Schweiker, the chairman of Philadelphia's CEO Council for Growth and President and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce testified on behalf of the Philadelphia business community, stressing the importance of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor service to Philadelphia's economic competitiveness, and the importance of maintaining the Corridor infrastructure to SEPTA commuter service in the region.

His testimony included four key recommendations. They include:

1) Find a secure source of funding for intercity passenger rail.

2) Define "state of good repair" and provide funding to achieve it.

3) Improve trip time on the Northeast Corridor.

4) Require Amtrak to work with the states and commuter railroads along the Northeast Corridor to develop a plan to increase the capacity of the corridor.

Download Mark Schweiker's testimony here.

The CEO Council for Growth is working with Regional Plan Association and others to form a business-civic coalition in the Northeast for investments in the Northeast Corridor and development of a long-term capital plan for improved and competitive intercity rail service.

The Summary of the Smart Growth and Regional Landscapes Roundtable, chaired by Governor Parris Glendening can be downloaded here.

 This meeting took place at the March 2 Northeast Climate and Competitiveness Summit at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel. Participants discussed various strategies for collaborating across political boundaries to project natural resources that span multiple jurisdictions.  

Notes from the Northeast Corridor Mobility Roundtable, which took place at the Northeast Summit on March 2 are now available for download.

The discussion featured comments by Congressmen James Oberstar, Jerrold Nadler and former Governor Michael Dukakis.

Download Northeast Corridor Mobilty Roundtable Summary.

Left: Philly's skyline, as seen from the Loews Hotel.

Philadelphia – Over one hundred civic, business and government leaders met in Philadelphia on March 2 to discuss action steps toward creating a more efficient, sustainable, and economically competitive Northeast Megaregion.

The Summit was highlighted by keynote addresses by former Governors Michael Dukakis and Parris Glendening, who also chaired roundtable meetings on Northeast Corridor Mobility and Regional Landscapes and Smart Growth, respectively. The Summit was attended by Congressman James Oberstar (D-MN), chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who both participated in the Northeast Corridor Mobility roundtable.

Douglas Foy, Former Secretary of Commonwealth Development, Massachusetts, chaired the roundtable on Energy and Emissions, which focused on capitalizing on energy efficiency opportunities in the Northeast, reducing vehicle miles traveled, and strengthening the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

Download the Northeast Climate and Competitiveness Summit Program here. 

Read Neal Peirce's March 11 syndicated column on the Summit: A Unified Northeast Corridor: Dream, Necessity, Or Both?

Energy and Emissions: Read the Roundtable Summary for Energy and Emissions.

Download Presentation by Christopher Walker of the Climate Group (1.7 M).

Download Presentation by Bary Rabe, University of Michigan (228 K).

The Northeast Summit was supported by grants from the William Penn Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and a contribution by WolfBlock.

On February 9 Regional Plan Association and the Policy Research Institute for the Region of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School held a luncheon forum for regional business leaders and scholars on "The Economic Geography of Megaregions."

The forum featured presentations by economists Saskia Sassen of the University of Chicago and Edward Glaeser of Harvard University, and responses by Paul Krugman of Princeton University and Kip Bergstrom of the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council.

The presenters and discussants attempted to answer the questions:
o Can megaregion-scale agglomerations be encouraged?
o What are the advantages of doing so?
o What are the public policies and infrastructure investments to encourage agglomeration at the megaregion scale?

The papers from the forum can be downloaded here from the Policy Research Institute for the Region website.

11/20/07: The complete conference papers are now available online on PRIOR's website.

Image: Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Last October and November Regional Plan Association and the Penn Institute for Urban Research convened the Greater Philadelphia-New York Leadership Exchange to promote collaboration between the two regions around common transportation, economic and land use challenges. The Leadership Exchange was sponsored by the William Pen Foundation and was part of ongoing research by the Regional Plan Association to examine the Northeast Megaregion and its mobility needs, economic competitiveness and growth concerns. The two meetings, held in Philadelphia and New York City highlighted topics such as Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, the role of anchor institutions in economic development, and wireless internet initiatives in center cities.

The Leadership Exchange was the first step in a multiyear project to build a “Northeast Network” of business and civic leaders from Boston to Washington to advocate for investments and policies to sustain the economic competitiveness, sustainability and quality of life if the Northeast in the 21st Century. The Leadership Exchange will be followed by a “Northeast Climate and Competitiveness Summit” on March 2 at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel, featuring roundtable meetings on Northeast Corridor Mobility, Energy and Emissions, and Regional Landscape and Smart Growth.

Notes from the two Leadership Exchange Meetings can be downloaded here.

Click here for notes from the Philadelphia meeting.

Click here for notes from the New York City meeting.  

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.   

Building on the University of Pennsylvania School of Design's Spring 2005 report, "Reinventing Megalopolis," this team of U. Penn students has strengthened recommendations for economic competitiveness, high-speed rail, and envionmental preservation in the Northeast Megaregion.

This is one of the reports that resulted from the International Planning Workshop in Madrid in March 2006.

Download the report

 March 6-10, 2006 Three teams of graduate planning students from the University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas and University of Michigan, gathered this month for a week-long workshop on megaregion planning with a faculty of esteemed European planners in Madrid, Spain. The student teams were engaged in urban planning, architecture or engineering courses at their respective universities, exploring the emergence of megaregions in the Northeast, the Texas Triangle and the Great Lakes. Working in groups, they began the week with presentations that defined their megaregions, analyzing demographic and economic trends, and proposed potential strategies to address challenges encountered at the megaregional scale.

This three-dimensional map, generated by Regional Plan Assocation, depicts degrees of urban density in the Northeast Megaregion.

Notice the spikes in places like Manhattan, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.