SPUR Reflects on Megaregions

The San Francisco Planning & Urban Research Association hasn't always been aligned with my political leaning in years past, but lately I've come to reconsider development in San Francisco. Last year, an Urbanist feature proposed a national view of megaregions beyond the notion of states and metropolitan entities alone. I re-read the article by Egon Terplan and Gabriel Metcalf with renewed interest today.

Click here for the maps analyzing the boundaries of the Northern California megaregion.

This early moment of the new century may find us redefining our American landscape, to take in its history greater than a mere 250 years, or 400, or even 1,000. It is both an older place than we think, and becoming a place that we have yet to fully articulate.

Our centrism around Washington DC has clearly warped as much as it has woven the fabric of our cultural common imagination, a clear code of who we are in toto. I am not against the idea of a strong capitol, and am an admirer of the District of Columbia in many ways -- a world center of major artworks, a radically enlightened urban plan, neither a state nor un-stated, and still a beacon of democracy despite fissures. The unfashionable idea of "Founding Fathers" leads me back to my most cherished member, Benjamin Franklin, a lover of mankind, a Philadelphian, a statesman, a philosopher, a very busy man, and a jovial partaker of the rascally side of life. He was never a president, but marks a bill, helped dreamed us into life but probably preferred France, and is yet a well of inked guides to the country's ever-present future. I stop by his statue in Washington Square whenever I'm by to pay respect.