New Deal Regionalism

A Critical Reiew

Chapter XII of the National Resources Committee''s December 1935 report Regional Factors in National Planning and Developmentbore the title "A Preliminary Exploration of Regionalism." It reported the findings of a questionnaire sent to a dozen social scientists, ten of them geographers and two sociologists. The respondents were asked three sets of questions about the nature, delineation, and use of regions; their responses were summarized and generously excerpted. The stated goal of the exercise was to draw on expert opinon to dispel some of the "vagueness of thinking" that seemed to prevail whenever the term "region" was used.

Two leading planners have called this survey and synthesis of views "the most sophisticated treatment of the regional concept available in an official government planning document, even today" (Friedmann and Weaver, 1979). Yet it never achieved wide circulation or influence. Least of all did it have an impact in geography, the field most centrally concerned with the nature of regions and the one from which most of the participants came. The issues addressed have continued to be hotly debated from time to time, but rarely with reference to the 1935 report. If its authors set out to bring order to the regional concept, they failed. What factors have so limited its influence? How is its fate to be explained? What lessons can be learned from the episode? A closer look at the report''s context, leadership, participants, survey findings, and results may provide some answers.

This is the first in a four paper series as part of the special inquiry into environmental regionalism launched by the Kennedy School in 1999. The first initiative was a replication of the national survey of regionalists in 1934-35, this time focusing on the use of regions for environmental purposes. With this information in hand from nearly fifty respondents, the next task was to analyze the repsonses and prepare recommendations for policy and program intiatives.