Excerpt
IT is up to all people to get involved in determining what our natural landscape and our communities will look like in the year 2020 and beyond. We must have the political courage and foresight to use the tools that are available to us. We can maintain the beauty of our natural landscape and also build better, more livable communities than we have today.
The basic decision that policymakers must make is to follow a difficult course of land use planning and implementation of those plans. The alternative is to follow the easy course of letting short-sighted market forces prevail. Former Governor Tom McCall of Oregon called those forces the “buffalo-hunter” mentality that exploits natural and manmade resources for short-term selfish gain.
We should start with an examination of basic land use facts. America is blessed with an abundance of land. Only about two percent of the nation's 2.3 billion acres is classified as urban. The density of development in this urban area is about one dwelling unit per gross acre. In comparison, the density of well-planned, attractive communities built within the last 25 years, such as Reston, Virginia, and Columbia, Maryland …
Footnotes
Warren T. Zitzmann, formerly a community planner for the Soil Conservation Service, now is a land use consultant, 117 Tollgate Way, Falls Church, Virginia 22046. This article is based on his testimony in May 1989 before the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Subcommittee on General Oversight and Investigations.
- Copyright 1989 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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