Southern Regional Planning and Development

Abstract

T WENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, the same year in which the first issue of the Journal of Politics appeared,, the National Resources Planning Board was established by congressional action as part of the Executive Office of the President. The primary function of the Board as constituted in 1939 was to advise the President on matters of long-range policy. Another function was to stimulate interest and activity in planning, nationally and by states, regions, and local governments. The Board saw area planning as a responsibility shared by all levels of government, and the passing of a quarter of a century has served to make even clearer the intergovernmental character of planning. In 1942 the National Resources Planning Board issued as one of a series a report on Regional Planning in the Southeast. The series, which in a sense was to be the swan song of the agency, placed great emphasis on a regional approach to the development of American resources and gave considered emphasis to the role that state planning must play in that process. The report for the Southeast directed attention to the activities and potential usefulness of the Southeastern Regional Planning Commission, an agency destined soon to disappear. It discussed also the activities of the various state planning agencies which had recently been organized and were functioning with assistance of various types from the National Resources Planning Board. The state planning agencies of the 1940's were concerned with inventorying resources and with the collection of basic data over a wide range of subject fields. They addressed themselves also to problems of physical planning, such as the conservation of land and water resources, and to the formulation of public works programs. A few of the state planning agencies undertook studies of special problems in the economic and social fields, but none produced or even undertook to produce comprehensive state plans in an action framework.