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NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

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The modesty of this final contribution should not be allowed to obscure the grand vision which Haig saw of the future of planning. The current report continues his effort to give concrete form to visionary approaches, which has in more than one way been the thrust of much of the work of RPA. At the time of the preparation of the second Regional Plan, the Association undertook a major survey of the social and economic health of the Region, under the direction of Raymond Vernon, and with outstanding contributions by other associates. In economic terms, this multi-volume study took in the main a "macro" view of the Region and of the interaction of its principal parts. This view omitted any detailed study of many of the mechanisms through which New York City and the Region carry out their social and economic functions. The breadth and power of this approach resided in the comprehensiveness of its overall view of the Region, but perhaps it allowed too much neglect of the detailed interactions which are influenced by planning decisions, and whose understanding may provide the necessary basis for a successful planning effort. This Handbook reports on the study of land values and transit access undertaken by the Association preparatory to the third Regional Plan. The study represents an effort to relate a macro phenomenon — the health of the core of the Region in the Manhattan CBD — to the needs of other parts of the Region, through a micro­ analysis of its transport connections. This effort is based on a study of the micro-economic phenomena related to the choice of residence and choice of shopping opportunities, given a pattern of employment, as these are aggregated together into major economic influences. These detailed phenomena were broadly understood at the time of the first Regional Plan, but their detailed analysis was beyond the grasp of Haig and even of the Vernon study. Their accomplishment at this time provides a measure of the progress of regional analysis over the last sixty years. And a review of these accomplishments also provides a foretaste of the possible extension of these methods into the formulation of the third Regional Plan. At the same time, a candid appraisal of the study serves to underline some of the remaining difficulties which face development in this direction. The reader's understanding of the present methods and results and their future potential may benefit from a brief review of the recent history of urban analysis. In this review, a particular effort is made to show how history is reflected in the modeling approach reported in this Handbook, and how it influences future developments. This review is brief since the intellectual content and historical relationship of each model is sketched in the following chapters. The last fifty years have seen an enormous growth of our

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