ABSTRACT
The prospects of metropolitan regionalism appeared bright in the early twenties, partly because of the regressive mood of the federal and state governments. Americans first exceeded 100 million in number during the late teens, yet their gains of that decade, though sharply curtailed by the war, had occurred chiefly in the cities, which now comprised well over half the total. Innovations and accommodations became more feasible as the rate of urban growth accelerated. Highway improvements that stopped at the city line had a limited value, and the search for wider planning powers commenced in a dozen metropolises in the early twenties. Legislative restraints had little or no effect in the voluntary fields, and the surging advance of metropolitan regions was most clearly evident. Thus the emergent metropolises, frustrated in their efforts to achieve regional polity, turned to Washington for leadership.
