Regional design, long a backbone for spatial planning, even if under other names, has become topical again for two reasons-as a key strategy and as a key tool in spatial management. This is due to several reasons. New conditions of urbanization that result from the convergence of several factors highlight the need for spatial strategy formation and application at supra-metropolitan scales. These new conditions include globalization, climate change, booming urban population, increased mobility and interconnectivity, and new infrastructure technologies. These forces driving urbanization today and into the future play out at the urban scale, which is increasingly encompassed in the city-region. The solutions to the impacts and problems that these forces cause must be dealt with by a strategic urbanism at a scale that matches. This scale of urbanism can be denoted as regional design. To justify these claims and to understand the origins of regional design and its relevance today and into the future, the master strokes in its history are presented next. After that, we discuss current concepts and practices in regional design. In conclusion, we offer answers to the question: why a resurgence of regional design?.

The climate crisis has grown worse, with impacts more severe, widespread, unpredictable, and what’s worse, not dealt with globally in a meaningful way. The devastating wildfires in Australia in late 2019 and the western United States of America (USA) in 2020 seemed to underscore that consensus, with tens of millions of acres, thousands of homes burned, many lives lost, including an estimated one billion animals. As humans and our constructions - roads, infrastructures, buildings - destroy and invade formerly intact habitats across the globe, species of all kinds interact in new ways. As cities have grown into metropolises, megacities, and city regions, people witness the increasing urgency to plan and manage these behemoths so that their residents can lead healthy&prosperous lives, sustainably. The contribution that regional design makes to resolving these conundrums is to highlight the relatively new arena of governance that comports with the actual spatial scale of urban phenomena now and into the future - the region.

Regional design, long a backbone for spatial planning, even if under other names, has become topical again for two reasons – as a key strategy and as a key tool in spatial management. This is due to several reasons. New conditions of urbanization that result from the convergence of several factors highlight the need for spatial strategy formation and application at supra-metropolitan scales. These new conditions include globalization, climate change, booming urban population, increased mobility and interconnectivity, and new infrastructure technologies. These forces driving urbanization today and into the future play out at the urban scale, which is increasingly encompassed in the city-region. The solutions to the impacts and problems that these forces cause must be dealt with by a strategic urbanism at a scale that matches. This scale of urbanism can be denoted as regional design. To justify these claims and to understand the origins of regional design and its relevance today and into the future, the master strokes in its history are presented next. After that, we discuss current concepts and practices in regional design. In conclusion, we offer answers to the question: why a resurgence of regional design?