Needless Fuss about Land Use
Bruce-Briggs, B.
B. Bruce-Briggs Needless Fuss about Land Use • • Considering land use as a national problem is very recent. For most of U. S. history the national goal was to occupy what were perceived as vast...
...A familiar complaint of environmentalists is the filling-in of various wet lands and swamp lands...
...Seventy percent of our population is approximately 145 million people...
...Urban problems are exacerbated by overcrowding...
...A house with a 2,000-square-foot foundation occupies about 3% of a two-acre lot...
...This sounds terrible until we convert the dramatic statement to more traditional ways of measuring land area...
...It is interesting to note that the most glaring inefficiencies of land use are the results of past government planning mistakes...
...These experiments have nothing whatever to do with the intensity of space occupation in the United States...
...This "waste" was widely heralded in the press as a great revelation...
...If someone wants to do something with a piece of land badly enough to pay for it, it can be done...
...But whatever the rate, why is it bad that land is so absorbed...
...2% of our land area is 40 million acres...
...Some claim that these are necessary to maintain the ecological balance...
...The populations of high-density cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, St...
...compares very favorably with that of most of the other prosperous industrialized nations of the world...
...Nevertheless, even according to this very low density definition of urbanization, just over 1% of the continental U.S...
...William H. Whyte writes of The Last Landscape...
...Approximately half of our national land area, or 1 billion acres, is estimated to be devoted to agriculture of one sort or another...
...To them, land meant security, status, wealth, and power...
...use policy with "a big stick," has commented that "each decade new urban growth will absorb 5 million acres...
...This amounts to just under 2 billion acres...
...Disturbing, perhaps, but hardly intolerable...
...Perhaps many of the complainers about overcrowding really mean that they perceive many of our cities to be too large both in population and in area...
...It is difficult to think of more inhospitable land than the tundra of Alaska, yet the oil under the ground gives it value...
...This practice is so reasonable that some states have been doing it for over fifty years...
...But the area devoted to 8 The Alternative: An American Spectator June/July 1976 open pit extraction has been overly dramatized...
...The same is true in the case of water pollution...
...irreplaceable wet lands, swamp lands, and other environmentally necessary areas are being destroyed...
...When emissions are concentrated, problems can exist...
...Most of the land in the United States is "open space"—privately owned, but in custom and practice open to anyone who does not abuse the privilege...
...Quite a different picture appears, however, if we look at the census data carefully—even if we use the more populous 1970 census data...
...If the citizens of a state desire more property to be owned by the government for these purposes, they will presumably elect and re-elect officials who will take the necessary steps to obtain these recreational facilities for public use...
...Instead of a continuous stretch of urban and suburban areas, more than a third of this population is in the New York urbanized area, another quarter is in the urbanized areas of Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, and a fifth of the population is in the other urbanized areas...
...As cities spread out more, people will drive more, but the increase in automobile emissions will be smaller than the increase in absorption capacity that results from the greater volumes of air under which they will drive...
...The "problem" of the wilderness being overrun by recreational exploitation rests fundamentally on values and class interests...
...Fortunately, that is the direction we are go-ing because of the individual planning choices of American families and the planning decisions of the developers and builders who profit by satisfying their wants...
...Americans have had the ideal of the freedom of the frontier...
...If one were to design a low-pollution America, one would design a low-density America...
...Certainly there is something to be said for ecological balance, particularly if man is included in the equation...
...Senator Gaylord Nelson has written that existing surface mining occupies a strip of land 100 feet wide and 11/2 million miles long...
...Americans want single-family houses, they want land, and the only way to achieve this is by "suburban sprawl...
...What we now call suburbanization can be traced back to the beginnings of American cities and even before then to the English cities of the late middle ages...
...Americans have long wanted and still want land...
...The same club strongly advocates the use of horses in the same areas...
...the sea shores and lake fronts are cluttered by vacation resorts...
...The hills of Vermont are precious because of the combination of their beauty and their proximity to the metropolitan centers of the eastern seaboard...
...The usefulness of land is a question of economics, not of engineering feasibility...
...A University of Michigan survey of the late 1960s found that 85 % of urban families wanted single-family homes on good-sized lots...
...The land around our growing metropolitan centers, except perhaps in California, is rarely the best The Alternative: An American Spectator June/July 1976 9 agricultural land...
...The waterfront issue is very much like the recreation issue...
...People have, according to their lights, attempted to maximize the usefulness of that land to themselves...
...has 600, West Germany has 650, Italy has 470, and France 250 persons per square mile...
...But actually, the typical urban American does not live in a great city...
...10 The Alternative: An American Spectator June/ July 1976 The Costs of Sprawl study mentioned above estimated that "planning" sprawl would increase efficiency by 4 %. We may disregard this number altogether because the quality of the data manipulated in this study had margins of error of 10-20% so a 4% variation is meaningless...
...It is possible to make crude projections of the future demand for these facilities...
...the countryside is paved over by highways...
...It has agricultural value only because of its close proximity to markets, so within a few hours' range of a metropolitan city truck and dairy farms will be found...
...For example, the draining of swamps in our southern states has eliminated many of the breeding grounds for malaria- and yellow fever-bearing mosquitos, which has reduced the prevalence of those diseases, thus "upsetting the balance of nature," making the South a good deal more hospitable to man...
...Americans have long wanted and still want land...
...However, it is not necessary to go into the ecological argument in any depth because it is easy to defer to the ecologist at almost every point...
...Small wonder that many thoughtful and concerned Americans are disturbed about the implications of the continuation of the present system and have been primed to lend a responsive ear to proposed government plans and programs which promise to alleviate the problems of land use in America...
...This sounds horrid, until we apply the most credible sort of analysis—simple arithmetic...
...Those people who already have vacation colonies on secluded lakes in the Sierras do not want them to be intruded upon by large developments that cater to the masses...
...Fortunately, they can have just about all the land they want...
...Waterfrontage is more limited...
...At such densities, as shall be discussed later, air and water pollution are negligible to the point of being for all practical purposes nonexistent...
...That example will sound facetious only to those whose concern for mosquitos overrides concern for humanity...
...some is owned by commercial enterprises which limit its use to their patrons...
...the scenery is being chewed up by strip mining and other forms of obnoxious resource extraction...
...The reasons for the American lust for land can be traced far back into our national history...
...Very few of them are doing anyone else any harm, so who am I or you to tell them they are wrong in their planning...
...has only an estimated 85,000 miles of salt water shoreline to which must be added tens of thousands of miles of river and lake frontage...
...largeamounts are owned either by local governments which usually restrict it to the taxpayers who paid for it, or by state and federal governments which generally open it to all citizens...
...That was written on the basis of the 1950 census...
...There is no foreseeable limit to sub-urbanization...
...Udall and Jackson cite them in support of their various proposals...
...development creeps up the shaky hillsides of Los Angeles...
...Nevertheless, I do not believe that any observer would deny that our land could be much more efficiently used...
...What are the alternatives...
...The shore can be reserved for the few—those few presumably being the rich or those designated as worthy by some government arbiter...
...This should not surprise us...
...Since the point of going to most of these parks is to be away from people, it would seem that crowding degrades the value of parks for those who use them...
...The next "problem" of the existing system is said to be "suburban sprawl...
...Approximately 1% of our land area is now devoted to highways (though by no means all of these are paved...
...Three hundred million people occupying land at a density of 2,000 per square mile would occupy 150,000 square miles or 5 % of the area of the continental United States, leaving 95% for other purposes...
...If so, this problem is rapidly being alleviated because the populations and densities of our most crowded cities are rapidly declining...
...A few of the densest areas of the United States, such as older San Francisco, Greenwich Village, and the East Side of New York, are among the most * Sometimes introduced into the discussion of alleged problems of "overcrowding" are descriptions of experiments with rats who became neurotic and vicious when packed into tight spaces...
...To duplicate the conditions of the rat experiments it would be necessary to jam a dozen humans into a small bathroom...
...What seems to be happening is fairly straightforward...
...The United States has just over 3'h million square miles of land, of which just slightly less than 3 million square miles are in the "lower 48" or "coterminous" United States...
...People manage to live very well in the almost entirely artificial environment of Hoiland...
...Presently this territory is organized very much like other property in the United States—most of it is owned by individual families, purchased for the private use of themselves and their friends...
...He might have added that the head of the research organization that performed this study is similarly well situated in a posh suburb of Chicago...
...Furthermore, only in our highly developed urban centers is a large amount of land devoted to highways—as much as 25% in places like Manhattan, San Francisco, and Los Angeles...
...The social origins of the leadership and membership of some of the leading conservation organizations indicate a serious attempt by the prosperous to bar the rabble and preserve the wilderness for themselves...
...An Opinion Research Corporation survey found that one-third of Americans would prefer to live in open country...
...The dwindling availability of recreation areas would appear to be a concrete problem...
...Fortunately, this is not the case...
...Two-thirds of American families own their own homes and the land upon which they stand...
...Recent demographic trends put the lie to the concept of Americans packing into larger and larger "megalopoli...
...was dominated by the rural gentry and no dynamic civic, urban spirit evolved...
...Time joins the chorus of complaint...
...the Atlantic shore to the Appalachian foothills...
...Consider, for example, the image of "Megalopolis" made popular by Jean Gottman in the his famous book of that name...
...Indeed, the tendency is strongly in the other direction—toward government ownership of waterfront lands obtained through eminent domain and donations...
...Many Los Angelenos think the same way about their metropolis...
...The most rapid declines tend to be in the most densely occupied sections...
...The tiny amounts alleged to be converted to subdivisions and shopping centers are well within the margin of error in estimating agricultural land...
...To minimize costs, it is desirable for the states to have long-range acquisition plans for recreation...
...It is machines that pollute...
...The amount of pollution that they produce is a function of their design and/or the facilities provided to clean up their effluents...
...For several hundred years Americans have taken for granted that they had the right to do pretty much what they pleased with their own land and that, in contrast to the situation in many foreign countries, the ownership of land in America is not the preserve of a narrow oligarchy...
...Fortunately, they can have just about all the land they want...
...So the question of land use in America is not one of land availability but of how the land is to be allocated most efficiently...
...Why is it assumed that the land no longer exists or is degraded because people live on it...
...It is people that pollute...
...Give each household slightly under 2 /3 of an acre...
...The charges listed earlier have been almost unchallenged in testimony before Congressional committees, in academic publications, and in the national media...
...Only riders in rush-hour subway trains experience such crowding...
...The problem of agriculture is usually stated in these terms—"a million acres of agricultural land are being converted to urban development every year...
...How else can a maximum number of Americans enjoy the water...
...some is owned by clubs, schools, and other private organizations which reserve it for their members...
...This is certainly true, but is grossly misunderstood...
...today the population and density are less than a third of that figure...
...Senator Henry Jackson, one of the most vigorous promoters of federal land *Any definition of "urban" is necessarily arbitrary, but it is reasonable to make use of the U.S...
...The relationship between land use and environmental quality is very poorly understood...
...If the area is wooded, as is the case in most of the eastern U.S...
...Or the shore can be used by no one at all, a superb solution if one prefers sea gulls to people...
...the most rapid growth in the U.S...
...We have so much land in the United States that we can indeed preserve individual wet lands, swamp lands, etc., if it pleases us to do so But, of course, we cannot afford to preserve all of them...
...Almost all Americans want suburban sprawl...
...And still other millions are retired people who once owned land or are young people who intend to own land later...
...The above article is reprinted by permission from No Land Is an Island, a collection of essays on land use published by the Institute for Contemporary Studies, 260 California Street, San Francisco, California 94111...
...is urbanized...
...In other words, even in our worst slums, people are less crowded than they were before...
...In other words, in the lower 48 states are nearly ten acres for every man, woman, and child...
...Large areas of the country are not ideally suited for urban development, but when the demand exists cities are built on the most unpromising land...
...Some of these losses in population have been due to clearance for urban renewal and highway construction, and to ordinary attrition of buildings by fire, sometimes aided by arson, but most of the drop is simply due to fewer people living in the same units...
...From my point of view it would be excellent if ten million other people moved away...
...As Messrs...
...In recent years, however, a new attitude toward the use of land has evolved...
...Another calculation goes like this: At the end of the century America will have about 100 million households...
...Urbanized areas," according to the 1970 Census, covered only about 1.15% of U.S...
...Let us run briefly through the supposed problems of "unplanned land use" listed above...
...For most of U. S. history the national goal was to occupy what were perceived as vast empty spaces...
...Individuals and groups sensitive to these problems have been strongly advocating much more comprehensive land use controls, and politicians sensitive to these constituencies have been proposing far-reaching legislation, especially the Jackson and Udall bills which would establish and finance state land use planning under federal guidelines...
...Recreation is another major land use...
...is in smaller cities and selected rural areas...
...government planning) could only come up with such a tiny increment of added efficiency...
...Fortunately, the concern with the aesthetic problems of open-pit mining has led to serious and intensifying efforts to restore the landscape when the job is done or to devise other uses for this property...
...This is not a bane but a blessing...
...There is somewhat more merit to the complaint that America is being "paved over" by highways...
...the swamps of Florida are drained...
...land area (excluding Alaska...
...As for the "inefficiencies" of private land use, while they may appear wasteful to me or the reader, these apparent inefficiences were the result of someone's private planning...
...We are so generously endowed with land in America that we can retain huge areas for pure and unspoiled wilderness if we so desire, and yet can develop equally huge areas for the outdoor amusement of our populace...
...The most casual "windshield survey" will find streets that are misaligned and too wide or too narrow, will reveal misplaced and even unnecessary parks in many locations and inadequate parks in others, will show stupidly crowded subdivisions, mislocated water and sewage facilities, and miserably placed public facilities...
...We are the first society so rich that we have been able to preserve such places merely because they are considered works of nature's art...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator June/ July 1976 7 desirable living places in the country...
...As we know, Westchester is one of the most desirable and fashionable suburban counties with a wide range of communities varying from fairly dense Yonkers City to the swank open exurbs of the northern county...
...Most of it is merely putting down houses on existing landscape...
...No land use in itself creates a pollution problem...
...One exception was the syndicated columnist Lew Koch who rather unkindly pointed out that the heads of EPA, HUD, and CEQ all live in nice big suburban houses...
...Emissions are the amounts of obnoxious material that a facility or activity produces...
...On the issue of "overcrowded cities" it is interesting to note that no one has ever made a credible case that any of our urban problems are exacerbated by crowding...
...It would seem to me excellent that our waterfronts are "cluttered" with vacation resorts...
...and Senator Jackson's own Pacific Northwest, the homes are rarely visible from the air (or even from the road...
...One hundred million times .64 acres is 64 million acres or 100,000 square miles...
...This sounds terribly serious until we remind ourselves that the nation has 2 billion acres and that 5 million acres is a quarter of 1% of the total land area...
...The coterminous U.S...
...The density of the U.S...
...pollution is an unacceptable concentration of emissions...
...Another land use "problem" is strip mining, which 'often leaves ugly scars on the landscape...
...In relating land use to air and water quality, one must distinguish between emissions and pollution...
...For example, I think that metropolitan New York is much too big, even though I live there...
...While it is possible to add to the amount of waterfront by building artificial lakes, and while the effective amount of waterfront can be increased through improved access, it certainly is the case that if all waterfrontage were privately owned, only a few of our citizens could enjoy it...
...This is the dominant theory taught in planning schools...
...Land ownership, and therefore land use, is acentral institution of American civilization...
...millions more own business, vacation, and retirement properties, inherited lands they often make little use of, and, of course, other properties to satisfy that ancient American passion for land speculation...
...This is particularly the case in urban centers...
...Simply stated, it cannot be demonstrated that any one pattern of local land use is necessary for man's survival and prosperity...
...and the very physical environment of the nation is threatened...
...if so, this issue largely boils down to a question of individual tastes and trade-offs...
...land is even created where none existed before—much of present-day Boston was originally tidal marsh, and hundreds of acres of land have been added to the tip of Manhattan island since colonial days...
...The heightened demand for waterfront property has the effect of promoting the latter solution...
...Even The Economist, that usually prudent and well-informed journal, points with alarm to the "problems" of American land use and the need for state action to correct them...
...In the last 50 years this liberty of land use has been modified only slightly by local zoning and subdivision ordinances which put some modest restraints on the rights of real property...
...The "overcrowding argument- is often made in these terms—" 70 % of our population lives on 2% of our land...
...But these highways give access to the other -99% of the land in the country...
...Moreover, urban development is not always the highest and best use of land...
...With very low population density, flushing raw sewa1ge directly into running streams rarely causes any problem...
...Messrs...
...The total emissions produced by automobiles are unimportant so long as they are scattered over a wide area...
...The planners always paint these as "residential" on their land use maps—for some reason only government-owned land can be designated "recreation...
...It is a poor reflection on the intelligence of our journalists that this study was so widely celebrated.* Actually, complex studies are unnecessary: simple arithmetic is adequate to put the land use problem in perspective...
...No agricultural expert seriously doubts that we could increase production fifty percent with existing technology on existing lands, if there were sufficient demand...
...Most people already drive to most of their activities...
...This means a total urban land usage of 300,000 square miles or only one-tenth of the continental land area of the United States, leaving 90 % for agriculture, wilderness, outdoor recreation, scenic preservation, resource extraction, and environmental protection...
...We are a rich country and can afford to be generous with nature...
...Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a more practical method of harmoniously integrating man and nature...
...However, it is very interesting that a group of researchers deeply committed to "planning" (i.e...
...Keep in mind that this is a very generous definition of urbanization...
...It is possible to go into any community in the country and find wasteful practices...
...It is no mistake that every city in America (and Canada, and England, and Australia, and Sweden, and now France) is moving toward suburban sprawl...
...Gallup polls found that only about one in eight Americans wishes to live in the cities, with about 30% preferring suburbs, about the same choosing small towns, and a quarter of all Americans preferring to live on a farm...
...In terms of area, agriculture and grazing are the most important uses of land...
...Since we have already noted that the natural direction of urban development in America without planning is toward lower and lower densities, it would appear that even without direct efforts to control emissions at their source, pollution would be gradually alleviated...
...has a density of 70 persons per square mile—U.K...
...Eighty percent of the population is using 13% of the area, while the other 87 % of "megalopolis" is occupied on an average density of only 175 per square mile or about one house for every 12 acres...
...It is not terribly expensive, apparently not incredibly difficult, and certainly has hardly any connection to the supposed need for overall statewide land use planning...
...homes are even built right on top of well-known earthquake faults...
...To take the most glaring example, very rarely in any discussion of how our land is being "used up" does one see the very simple number of how much total land we have...
...But counting only park lands grossly underestimates the amountof recreational land in the United States...
...In England, unlike on the continent of Europe, society If urban "overcrowding" is a problem, which it is not, it would be diminishing, because the populations and densities of our most crowded cities are rapidly declining...
...A glance out of the window of an airplane reveals that this "urban strip" is almost all green...
...Since the vast majority of Americans, for reasons obvious to all but ideologically-blinded analysts, prefer single-family houses to apartments and automobiles to collective transit facilities, it is difficult to understand the point of this study, unless it was intended to be an intellectual weapon in a campaign to discourage the bulk of Americans from having houses and cars...
...At present, it is widely believed and strongly advocated that the old dispensation no longer applies...
...We do not want all of our nation to turn into a vast Disneyland...
...Louis, Cincinnati, and New Orleans are dropping precipitously...
...A leading western-based "club" agitates to keep motorcycles from wilderness areas...
...valuable agricultural land is disappearing under urban development...
...Through some reasonable and also some inappropriate calculations, the distinguished research corporation that performed this report concluded that "sprawl" was 40% more expensive than more concentrated developments...
...The editorial page of the New York Times, that font and litmus of establishment opinion, foresees the nation "on a disaster course...
...Westchester has a density of 2,000 per square mile...
...Even New Jersey, the most intensely urbanized state, is half wooded...
...Scammon and Wattenberg have pointed out, the typical American family resides in a city the size of Dayton, Ohio, which has a metropolitan population of about 600,000 persons...
...The "swinging singles" who swarm in New York's Yorkville obviously love it—hut, as we shall see, most Americans prefer much lower densities and are achieving them...
...Since the turn of the century it has been accepted that large areas should be set aside for wild fauna and flora, but most human beings seem to feel that people are more important than animals and the "overrunning" of wilderness areas indicates that better use of them is being made by men...
...Small wonder, then, that we sometimes hear the very same people complain both about "overcrowded" cities and about the "sprawl" that is relieving that situation...
...It works out to 30,000 square miles or 1% of the national land area...
...our wilderness is being overrun by recreational exploitation...
...For every unit of residential land add two units for highways, commerce and industry, parks, and public uses...
...Given this historical background, it would seem strange that there has been so little public debate as to whether or not land use is indeed a national problem...
...In large cities such a practice can be (and in the past has been) fatal to tens of thousands of people...
...The most important and most intensely used outdoor recreation areas in America are the backyards of our 45 million homeowners...
...Another famous slum —central Harlem—has lost half its population in the last generation...
...Provided access is available(usually by road) almost all types of land are usable and used...
...Marshes have value as wildlife preserves...
...I for one would advocate a massive investment in park acquisition by the established means of eminent domain and donations from philanthropists and/ or tax avoiders...
...The motorcycle is a favorite mount of young blue-collar workers...
...The amount of the agricultural land in the United States depends in no way on the degree of urbanization, but rather upon the international market for agricultural commodities as modified by government policy...
...Because most of the city planners believe in the superiority of this system, and see quite the opposite occurring in the nation, they conclude that there is something fundamentally wrong with the American system,• that democracy has failed...
...When automobiles are concentrated in high-density areas, then the amount of emissions relative to the available atmosphere creates noticeable, annoying, and potentially noxious air pollution...
...But let us assume that overcrowded cities are bad...
...I'he Alternative: An American Spectator June/ July 1976 11...
...But when one examines the calculations one finds that almost all of this "cost of sprawl" is the additional cost of having a large single-family house rather than a smaller apartment, of driving a car rather than sharing a bus or a subway train...
...Assume a total population of 300 million, which according to present population trends should be achieved in the first half of the next century, and assume people wish to live at densities very much like that of today's Westchester County, New York...
...A thousand people per square mile is about 1 1/2 people per acre or about one house for every two acres...
...But this is a misrepresentation of both fact and potentiality...
...The great classic slum of the U.S.—the Lower East Side of New York—had 200,000 people per square mile in 1920, probably one of the highest densities in history...
...Almost all of the immigrants to North America came from rural peasant stock...
...The same is true for "open space...
...Another misleading study is the recently published The Costs of Sprawl commissioned by EPA, HUD, and the Council on Environmental Quality...
...By this time the reader may be asking, if our land use problems are so miniscule and/or misunderstood, why has this false perception penetrated so deeply into the minds of journalists and politicians...
...The U.S...
...The most dedicated opponents of ' 'suburban sprawl" are the city planners who, heavily influenced by nineteenth-century European ideologies, seem to hold the view that the bulk of the population should be jammed into high-density cities and the rest of the countryside should be left open for carefully supervised recreation and carefully managed agriculture and resource extraction...
...Every poll of the housing and land desires of Americans reveals an overwhelming preferencefor this life style...
...Prices of some waterfront properties have reached such astronomical heights that heirs cannot pay the inheritance taxes, so they have strong incentives to donate them to the local government or, more likely, to subdivide the property so that more people can enjoy and pay for it...
...so this "crowding" is three to four people (the size of an average family) per acre...
...Many people merely like to look at them, so various governmental and private organizations have put them aside for their scenic beauty...
...Without access land is useless and therefore worthless...
...The northeastern seaboard of the United States," Gottman wrote, "is today the site of a remarkable development —an almost continuous stretch of urban and suburban areas from Southern New Hampshire to Northern Virginia and from America is so generously endowed with land that we can retain huge areas for unspoiled wilderness and also develop huge areas for the outdoor amusement of our populace...
...True, agricultural land is lost, but this is low-quality land compared with the great grain-producing areas of the western plains or the staple-producing areas of the South...
...But this is not really a serious problem...
...Even aesthetically such development is more pleasing than row housing or urban renewal housing projects...
...Doubtless there are many reasons, but one that I find of great professional interest is that for a long time now we have been deluged with a long series of misleading yet widely publicized studies written by distinguished scholars or bearing the imprimatur of distinguished organizations...
...Actually, the terms of the discussion have been extremely one-sided and often incomplete...
...During the last generation the acreage of our national and state parks has increased by one-third while usage has increased almost fivefold...
...True, some choices will have to be made...
...There is an ugly strain of narrow class interests involved in the wilderness issue...
...The amount of farmland as estimated by the Department of Agriculture has fluctuated slightly over the last fifty years, but still remains at approximately 1 billion acres...
...There was also a clear and almost undisputed notion of how land use decisions are to be made—by the individual or corporate owner through the right of freehold property restricted only by laws which prohibited certain activities as immoral or antisocial (e.g., brothels), but not restraining the use of land as such...
...The Rockefeller Brothers Fund calls for the emasculation of historical property rights in order to deal with these problems...
...As the metropolitan cities expand, these lands are developed and the truck and dairy farming moves farther out...
...This question is especially pertinent when we consider the sort of "urban development" that is taking place...
...Former President Nixon called the existing system of land "misuse" "perhaps the most pressing environmental issue before the nation...
...There is no foreseeable limit to suburbanization...
...Overcrowding is a subjective evaluation...
...Bureau of Census definition of the "urbanized area" which is a city of 50,000 inhabitants or more plus adjoining areas developed at a density of 1,000 per square mile or more...
...Take for example the most widely publicized emissions—the hydrocarbons, carbon monoxides, and oxides of nitrogen produced by internal combustion engines...
...Other land areas have aesthetic value...
...Of course, Canada and the USSR have much lower densities, but most of their land area is totally vacant and the occupied part of each country has approximately the same density as the United States...
...Emissions in themselves are not a problem if the production from any activity is small relative to the reservoir into which it is introduced...
...On the very-low-density fringes of the metropolitan areas—the areas that are the wave of the future of exurban development—the addition of a home hardly affects the land...
...Viewed from a historical perspective, these demands for strengthened governmental land use controls would seem to be almost revolutionary...
...At the rate described by Jackson, it would -require 400 years to "absorb" 10% of the nation...
...Now, it has sometimes been argued that most of our land is useless—deserts, swamps, mountains, and tundra...
...Indeed, this is well known to persons who regularly fly along this Northeastern corridor...
...the American landscape is being gobbled up by uninhibited suburban sprawl...
...The mountains of Colorado are of increased value because people wish to ski and hike there...
...The deserts of Arizona are irrigated and built upon...
Vol. 9 • June 1976 • No. 9
