Abstract
In spite of its wide usage, region remains a challenging word to apply, A variety of communities and landscapes with some common characteristics form a region. Governmental agencies and others use the region to delineate multijurisdictional areas, such as those comprised of more than one town, city, county, state, or nation. Environmental scientists identify regions in reference to parts of the surface of Earth, such as drainage basins, physiographic provinces, climatic zones, or faunal areas. Geographers define a region as an uninterrupted area possessing some kind of homogeneity in its core, but lacking clearly defined limits, Even the standard dictionary definition is ambiguous—”any more or less extensive, contiguous part of a surface of space.” Still, the idea of regions, especially bioregions or ecoregions, presents an important concept. The words bioregions and ecoregions have been used interchangeably, although the latter clearly implies interacting biological and physical systems. The biogeographer Robert Bailey of the U.S. Forest Service explains an ecoregion as “[a]ny large portion of the Earth’s surface over which the ecosystems have characteristics in common.”
One’s sense of the scale of the place expands as one learns the region. The young hear further stories and go for explorations which are also subsistence forays—firewood gathering, fishing, to fairs or to the market. The outlines of the larger region become part of their awareness.
—Gary Snyder
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Notes
- 1.
Preston E. James, All Possible Worlds (Indianapolis: Odyssey Press, 1972).
- 2.
Robert G. Bailey, Ecoregions: The Ecosystem Geography of the Oceans and Continents (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1998), p. 2.
- 3.
Benton MacKaye, “Regional Planning and Ecology,” Ecological Monographs 10 (1940):351.
- 4.
Ibid., p. 350.
- 5.
Ibid., p. 351.
- 6.
Mark Luccarelli, Lewis Mumford and the Ecological Region (New York: The Guilford Press, 1995), and Robert Wojtowicz, Lewis Mumford and American Modernism: Eutopian Theories for Architecture and Urban Planning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
- 7.
Lawrence Buell makes an especially compelling case for centrality of Whitman and William Carlos Williams in this tradition, identifying the latter as a “bioregionalist,” in Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 109–120.
- 8.
Philip Boardman, The Worlds of Patrick Geddes: Biologist, Town Planner, Re-educator, Peace-warrior (London: Routledge &, Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 141.
- 9.
Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the Study of Civics (London: Williams & Norgate, 1915) as cited in Marshall Stalley, ed., Patrick Geddes: Spokesman for the Environment (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1972), p. 6,
- 10.
Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), p. 3.
- 11.
Regione Lombardia Assessorato all’ Urbanistica, Il Recupero Paesistico dell’Adda di Leonardo (Milano: Bollettino Ufficiale, Regione Lombardia, 1998), pp. 99–100, Joseph Rykwerr links die rise of the Milan navigli to “the invention of the lock in Italy [which] made it possible to move vessels up and down hills, transforming water transport.” The Seduction of Place: The City in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Pantheon, 2000), p. 32.
- 12.
Carl Frederick Kraenzel, The Great Plains in Transition (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), p. 292.
- 13.
Howard W. Odum in Howard W. Odum and Katharine Jocher, eds,, In Search of the Regional Balance of America (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1945), p. 3.
- 14.
Howard W. Odum, The Way of the South: Toward the Regional Balance of America (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1947), p. 3.
- 15.
Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton, The Regional City (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2001), p. 10.
- 16.
For example, see Charles B. Hunt, Physiography of the United States (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1967); Robert G. Bailey, Ecoregions of the United States (Ogden, Utah: U.S. Forest Service, 1978); Robert G. Bailey, Ecosystem Geography (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1996); Lewis M. Cowardin, Virginia Carter, Francis C. Colet, and Edward T. LaRoe, Classification of Wetlands and Deepwater Habitats in the United States (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979); and Young et al., “Planning the Built Environment.”
- 17.
Bailey, Ecoregions, p. 7.
- 18.
Wilbur Zelinsky, “North America’s Vernacular Regions,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70 (1980): 1–16.
- 19.
Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (Berkeley, California: Banyan Tree, 1975).
- 20.
Joel Garreau, The Nine Nations of North America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981),
- 21.
T. S. Eliot, Notes toward the Definition of Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949). I first learned of Eliot’s book from Jerry Young when we were writing a paper with our colleagues Kenneth Brooks and Kenneth Struckmeyer (Young et al., “Determining the Regional Context tor Landscape Planning”). That paper evolved into a subsequent book chapter (Young et al., “Planning the Built Environment”). Portions of this chapter originated from that work. That material has been rewritten and expanded here.
- 22.
Wendell Berry, A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural (New York: A Harvest/HBJ Book, 1975).
- 23.
Gary Snyder, The Real Work (New York: New Directions Books, 1980).
- 24.
Buell, Writing for an Endangered World.
- 25.
Buell, Writing for an Endangered World, p. 116, quoting Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990), p. 27.
- 26.
For example, see Thomas Berry, “Bioregions: The Context for Reinhabiting the Earth,” The Dream of the Earth, ed. Barbara Dean (San Francisco; Sierra Club Books, 1988).
- 27.
Clair Reiniger, “Bioregional Planning and Ecosystem Protection,” Ecological Design and Planning, eds. George F.Thompson and Frederick R. Steiner (New York John Wiley & Sons, 1997), p. 185. This material used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
- 28.
Kirkpatrick Sale, Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1985), p. 55.
- 29.
National Research Council, New Strategies for America’s Watersheds (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1999), p, 1.
- 30.
Michael Hough, Out of Place: Restoring Identity to the Regional Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).
- 31.
Gerald Young et al., “Planning the Built Environment: Determining the Regional Context,” The Built Environment: A Creative Inquiry into Design and Planning, eds., Young and Bartuska (Menlo Park, California: Crisp Publications, 1994).
- 32.
G. L. Young, “Environmental Law: Perspectives from Human Ecology,” Environmental Law 6 (1976):294.
- 33.
Lynch in Tridib Banerjee and Michael Southworth, eds., City Sense and City Design: Writings and Projects of Kevin Lynch (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1990), p. 68.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
Howard W. Odum, “The Promise of Regionalism,” Regionalism in America, ed. Merrill Jensen (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965), p. 403.
- 36.
Ibid., p. 397.
- 37.
TVA’s first board of directors included Arthur Morgan, Harcourt Morgan, and David Lilienthal.
- 38.
Arthur E. Morgan, The Miami Conservancy District (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951), and Dams and Other Disasters (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1971).
- 39.
Tennessee Valley Authority, “A Short History of TVA: From the New Deal to a New Century” (http://www.tva.gov/abouttva/history.htm).
- 40.
Yahaya Doka, “Policy Objectives, Land Tenure, and Settlement Performance: Implications for Equity and Economic Efficiency in the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project” (Pullman: Department of Agricultural Economics, Washington State University, 1979).
- 41.
David Myhra, “Rexford Guy Tugwell: Initiator of America’s Greenbelt New Towns, 1935 to 1936,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 40 (1974):176–187.
- 42.
See Benton MacKaye, The New Exploration (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1928), and Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988).
- 43.
Arnold R. Alanen and Joseph A. Eden, Main Street Ready-Made: The New Deal Community of Glendale, Wisconsin (Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1987), p. 8.
John Nolen (1869–1937) has been called the “father of American town planning.” Educated first in business at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and then in landscape architecture at Harvard University, Nolen prepared city plans for Savannah, Georgia (1906); Roanoke, Virginia (1907); Montclair, New Jersey (1908); Glen Ridge, New Jersey (1908); and San Diego (1908 and 1925–1926). His San Diego work led to a master plan for Balboa Park (1927). He also designed several new towns, including Kingsport, Tennessee; Mariemont, Ohio; and Venice, Florida. Nolen helped establish the city planning profession in the United States and wrote and edited several books.
- 44.
Myhra, “Rexford Guy Tugwell”; Frederick R. Steiner, The Politics of New Town Planning (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981); Zane L. Miller, Suburb: Neighborhood and Community in Forest Park, Ohio, 1935–1976 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981); and Cathy D. Knepper, Greenbelt, Maryland (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
- 45.
Hubert N. van Lier and Frederick R. Steiner, “A Review of the Zuiderzee Reclamation Works: An Example of Dutch Physical Planning,” Landscape Planning 9 (1982):35–59.
- 46.
Coen van der Wal, In Praise of Common Sense: Planning the Ordinary. A Physical Planning History of the New Towns in the IJsselmeerpolders (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1997).
- 47.
John Friedmann and William Alonso, eds., Regional Development and Planning (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1964).
- 48.
John Friedmann, Retracking America (Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1973), and Ian McHarg, Design with Nature (Garden City, New York: Natural History Press/Doubleday, 1969).
- 49.
Friedmann, Retracking America, p. 63.
- 50.
McHarg, Design with Nature, p. 153. This material is used with permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
- 51.
John Friedmann, “Regional Planning as a Field of Study,” Regional Development and Planning, eds. Friedmann and Alonso, pp. 63–64.
- 52.
As quoted by Gerald Young, “Human Ecology as an Interdisciplinary Domain: A Critical Inquiry,” Advances in Ecological Research 8 (1974): p. 46.
- 53.
Carl F. Kraenzel, “Principles of Regional Planning: As Applied to the Northwest,” Social Forces 25 (1947):376.
- 54.
Frederick Steiner, “Regional Planning in the United States: Historic and Contemporary Examples,” Landscape Planning 10 (1983);297–315, and Tom Bartuska and Gerald Young, eds., The Built Environment: A Creative Inquiry into Design and Planning (Menlo Park, California: Crisp Publications, 1994),
- 55.
Robert Estall, “Planning in Appalachia: An Examination of the Appalachian Regional Development Programme and Its Implications for the Future of American Regional Planning Commissions,” Institute in British Geographers 7 (1982):52.
- 56.
Ibid.
- 57.
Alan J. Hahn and Cynthia D. Dyballa, “State Environmental Planning and Local Influence,” Journal of the American Planning Association 47 (1981):324–335.
- 58.
Tad Widby, “Trouble in Tahoe,” Planning 46, no. 3 (1980):6–7, and Hal Rubin, “Lake Tahoe: A Tale of Two States,” Sierra 66, no.6 (1981):43–47.
- 59.
U.S. Congress, Tahoe Regional Planning Compact (Public Law 96–551), 1980,
- 60.
Pinelands Commission, New Jersey Pinelands Comprehensive Management Plan (New Lisbon, New Jersey, 1980). See also, Jonathan Berger and John W. Sinton, Water, Earth, and Fire (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985).
- 61.
Jack Ahern, Greenways as Strategic Landscape Planning: Theory and Application (Wageningen, The Netherlands: Wageningen University, 2002).
- 62.
Robert D. Yiro and Tony Hiss, A Region at Risk: The Third Regional Plan for the New York–New Jersey–Connecticut Metropolitan Area (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1996).
- 63.
Ibid., p. 1. See also, John Thomas, “Holding the Middle Ground,” The American Planning Tradition, ed. Robert Fishman (Washington, D.C.: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000), pp. 33–63.
- 64.
Yaro and Hiss, A Region at Risk, p. 2.
- 65.
Eugenie Ladner Birch, “The Big Picture People,” Planning 66, no. 3 (2000):22.
- 66.
Giovanna Fossa, Robert Lane, Danilo Palazzo, and Robert Pirani, eds., Transforming the Places of Production. Trasformare i luoghi della Produzione (Milano: Edizioni Olivares, 2002).
- 67.
Ibid. Work on one of the Italian sites, an abandoned slaughterhouse in the town of Monza, continued and resulted in a plan for its renovation. Danilo Palazzo, Master Plan dell’area dell’ex macello a Monza (Milano: Politecnico di Milano, 2001).
- 68.
Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey through Texas: Or, A Saddle Trip on the Southwestern Frontier (New York: Dix, Edwards & Co., 1857), p. 110.
- 69.
Ibid. p. 111.
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Steiner, F. (2016). The Ecological Region. In: Human Ecology. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-778-0_6
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