Four Corridors: Design Initiative for RPA's Fourth Regional Plan

The Regional Plan Association has produced four comprehensive regional plans for the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut metropolitan region since its foundation in 1922. This book examines the evolving role of design in the first three plans and presents the design initiatives of the Fourth Regional Plan (2017) in depth. The new plan seeks to shift the focus of regional planning from a traditional center-to-periphery hierarchy to an expanded notion of “corridor” that includes transportation, ecology, access and equity.

Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, this collaborative initiative of the Regional Plan Association, Princeton University, and four innovative design teams produced design proposals for four regional corridors: the Highlands (forest corridor), the Bight (coastal corridor), the Inner Ring (suburban corridor) and the Triboro (city corridor). Looking forward to 2040, the Fourth Regional Plan imagines a transformed and vital future for parts of the New York City metro area that are little understood and often overlooked.

Paul Lewis is a principal at LTL Architects, New York, and Professor and Associate Dean at Princeton University School of Architecture.

Guy Nordenson is a structural engineer at Guy Nordenson and Associates, New York, and Professor of Architecture and Structural Engineering at Princeton University.

Catherine Seavitt is a landscape architect at Catherine Seavitt Studio, New York, and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the City College of New York.