Land use in North America and Britain, circa 1950 to 1970

ABSTRACT:

A comparison of land uses in Britain, Canada, and the United States between 1950/1951 and 1970/1971 indicated that, at the national scale, competition for land between agriculture and other land-using activities is stronger among rural land demands than urban land demands. But the national land use data failed to highlight conflicts among land uses involving prime agricultural land on a more local scale. The comparison of land uses suggested that the loss of prime agricultural land in Britain, Canada, and the United States is a local concern with national consequences. In this sense, national figures hide many of the more pressing problems of prime land loss because they fail to take into account the distributional characteristics of agricultural land with urban or other uses of land at the local scale.