The futures of regional design

Abstract

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.