The modernity of the Regional Planning Association of America

To address the relative modernity and contemporaneity of the legacy of the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA). its position between 1923 and 1933 is compared to ideas of regional planning over the past 100 years. In this regard members of the RPAA, such as Mumford, Stein, Wright and MacKay, were initially strongly influenced by Geddes's idea of a geomorphology of human spatial systems, which also influenced the New Deal Era. While the utopianism of the RPAA's thinking diminished over time, its practical idealism persisted. To paraphrase Friedmann and Weaver, in the fluctuations between 'functionality' and 'territorial integration' that occurred in regional planning, the RPAA's concern for humankind and nature has persisted into today's Anthropocene Era. In short, while the RPAA's legacy's subsequent influence over regional planning has varied, its relevance to functional integration has been longer lasting than its adherence to territorial integration.