Regional planning organizations help coordinate decisionmaking among local officials across the United States. Many of these organizations, such as metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), prioritize transportation investments, while others, such as councils of government, provide a forum for local elected officials to communicate about major challenges and plans.
But who are the people who direct these agencies? Boards don’t always reflect all areas of a region equally, giving vastly more voting power to some areas than others. But that doesn’t tell us much about the people serving on the boards themselves.
To learn more about the role of planning boards for transportation and housing, the Urban Institute conducted a large-scale survey of regional planning organizations, including questions about the demographic composition of agency board members.
We find these boards largely overrepresent homeowners and drivers compared with their respective regions’ populations, which could result in underserving the needs of renters and nondrivers. This finding builds on our previous research that local land-use agencies systematically underrepresent women, people of color, and renters.
Boards fail to represent residents in key ways related to housing and transportation
In our survey, we asked staff of the regional planning organizations to document the characteristics of their agencies’ boards. Board typically comprise elected and appointed officials representing local governments in accordance with the MPOs bylaws. (In other words, our data do not represent the staff of these organizations.)
We asked about the share of agency board members who are homeowners, which we compared with the share of households who are homeowners in each respective region. The results indicate that homeowners are massively overrepresented on regional planning organizations’ boards. While the median metropolitan area in our sample has a 69 percent homeownership share—meaning more than 30 percent of households are renters—the median board is composed of 97 percent homeowners. All but 4 of the 66 organizations surveyed had a higher share of homeowners on their boards than living in their regions.
This imbalance may relate to the life stage at which members join MPO boards. Most people who make it onto boards only do so after either significant education or investment in political campaigns, both of which require age and money and correlate with homeownership.
Further, board members are typically appointed or elected, and the demographics of elected officials consistently underrepresent people of color and low-income families. Homeowners in particular have different identities (PDF), finances, preferences, motivations (PDF), and risk calculations (PDF) than renters—meaning they may have more difficulty perceiving and representing renters’ interests.
Similar findings emerged regarding the commuting habits of regional planning organizations’ board members. For the average board, 88 percent of members drive to meetings—and for more than half of boards, all members drive to meetings. Yet, in the typical region, a quarter of commuters do not drive alone to work, instead taking transit, carpooling, walking, or biking.
As our previous research indicates, this difference may stem from the large share of board members who reside in suburban communities, where effective transit options are less available. But it also may stem from the fact that elected officials who sit on MPO boards are wealthier and more likely to be homeowners in spread-out neighborhoods, where driving is almost obligatory, compared with the average residents of their regions.
Making planning boards more representative
The overrepresentation of homeowners and drivers on the boards of regional planning organizations may undermine their ability to reflect the needs and desires of their constituents, leading to these organizations prioritizing, for example, highways over transit investments. Population-based proportional seats on MPO boards may help somewhat, but regional planning organizations and state policymakers should identify alternatives to ensure their boards fairly reflect their communities.
One approach is for organizations to improve their outreach to board members and the public, to help them understand key issues affecting renters and those without car access. COMPASS (the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho), in the Boise region, maintains an education series that delves into issues like the housing market and transportation planning. Other MPOs’ staff arrange ride-along days or Amazing Race–style challenges for board members to experience commuting on the public transit systems they oversee.
Another approach includes adding seats for nonelected community representatives who reflect underrepresented groups (e.g., renters, people with low incomes, or those who don’t own a car). Recently proposed legislation in New York would entitle transit riders voting power on the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Finally, states could recruit a paid, representative community advisory board, complete with planning-academy training (PDF), that, like a planning commission, makes recommendations and provides input on regional agencies’ short- and long-range plans. Any of these approaches could ensure housing and transportation plans better meet the needs of all residents, not just those who have the platform to have their voices heard.
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