Planning a ‘Regional breathing space’: the ecological shift in the Comprehensive Land Use Plan for the New Jersey Meadowlands, 1970

The discussion of resiliency in the New York metropolitan area, following the Superstorm Sandy in 2012, is not a new one. The recent shift in policy approach, including the 2017 regional plan released by the Regional Plan Association (RPA), demands new land use definitions and governance strategies for the region’s ecological planning. Amidst this colossal undertaking, the study of a historical plan that was made for the New Jersey Meadowlands, one of the grand sites where today’s resiliency rebuilding efforts concentrate, sheds light on how policymakers and planners conceptualized an ecosystem problem at the crux of the environmental movement in the 1960s. The plan, known as the 1970 Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) of Hackensack Meadowlands, was not only a land use plan but was also a manifesto reflecting a new ethos for a network of wetlands that were deemed ecologically ‘unworthy’. Although only partially implemented, the plan not only prefaced a future strategy for the Meadowlands, but it also formed the basis for a one-of-a-kind eco-governance model in the United States. This paper situates this comprehensive episode of planning in the region’s history, raising larger questions about governance issues in interconnected ecosystems and land use negotiations across political jurisdictions.