Planning the Great Metropolis

As the Regional Plan Association embarks on a Fourth Regional Plan, there can be no better time for a paperback edition of David Johnson's critically acclaimed assessment of the 1929 Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs. As he says in his preface to this edition, the questions faced by the regional planners of today are little changed from those their predecessors faced in the 1920s.
Derided by some, accused by others of being the root cause of New York City's relative economic and physical decline, the 1929 Plan was in reality an important source of ideas for many projects built during the New Deal era of the 1930s.
In his detailed examination of the Plan, Johnson traces its origins to Progressive era and Daniel Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago. He describes the making of the Plan under the direction of Scotsman Thomas Adams, its reception in the New York Region, and its partial realization.
The story he tells has important lessons for planners, decision-makers and citizens facing an increasingly urban future where the physical plan approach may again have a critical role to play.

David Johnson was born of a Norwegian North Dakota farmer and a Honolulu-born German Navy brat mother who survived Pearl Harbor. He received his education from Detroit and Central Michigan, meeting Sister Souljah in person, but graduated from Fresno State anyway. Detroit taught Mr. Johnson to think, work, buy, and be American. He retired from security in 2018. His favorite team is the Detroit Pistons. His favorite movie is Lean on Me, which teaches all races must take responsibility for their actions. As a single man, he takes care of his younger brother in Vista, California.

Preface to the Paperback Edition. Preface. 1. Introduction 2. The Making of the New York Metropolitan Region 3. The Emergence of a Planning Tradition 4. First Steps Towards a Metropolitan Regional Plan 5. The Search for Scope and Substance 6. Technological and Ideological Inputs 7. From Survey to Plan 8. Conflict Amidst Planning: Three Decisions 9. Carrying Out the Plan: 1929 to 1941 10. Plan and Reality: 1965 11. The Regional Plan as an Artefact and Process