As the Regional Plan Association embarks on a Fourth Regional Plan, there can be no better time for a paperback edition of David Johnson's critically acclaimed assessment of the 1929 Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs. As he says in his preface to this edition, the questions faced by the regional planners of today are little changed from those their predecessors faced in the 1920s.

Derided by some, accused by others of being the root cause of New York City's relative economic and physical decline, the 1929 Plan was in reality an important source of ideas for many...