This is urban sprawl

This is urban sprawl
Originally uploaded by rllayman.

Yesterday, I scored a copy of The Vanishing Land: Proposals for Open Space Preservation, a planning agency report for Fairfax County Virginia, published in 1962!!!! (Don't you love used bookstores?) It cost me $15, which accounting for inflation, is probably comparable to the $3 it cost back then.

Who would have thought that these issues were being addressed "back then" in a thoughtful way? (Of course, the issues were discussed, but being dealt with is another question I suppose.)

From page 20:

Increase of Land Consumption for Suburban Development

"The rapid urbanization and population increase in Fairfax County, as in urban counties all over the country, are causing logical concern over the growing lack of efficient use of land necessary of efficient servicing of these lands. The mass exodus of middle and upper income families from the metropolitan center to "cheap, open, rural land, in the country," has resulted in hundreds of large-lot subdivisions which have skipped over previously serviced areas and are demanding equal services and schools further and further out."

Page 7, the Introduction starts out with the question "Is it Too Late To Save Open Space?"

"Fairfax County is nearing a crisis in the supply of remaining open land due to the fantastically swift, uncoordinated development in the County's urban fringe over the past two decades. This urbanization is leapfrogging its way across the entire County, replacing the cherished rural atmosphere. If the present rate of consumption of open land occurs for two more decades (160-200 acres per 1,000 new residents), the entire County will have been eaten up in urban sprawl, and all of the desirable tracts of open land will have vanished."

I haven't really had a chance to go through the volume, but it's well designed, with great images, fold-out maps, die-cut effects, a mail-in "Business Reply Card" postage-paid four question survey, etc.

Despite my wishes to focus solely on the center city, more and more the regional imperative pulls and twists at me. (I saw a copy of the 660+ page Bethesda: A Social History in another bookstore, and it discusses the urban vs. rural tension in Montgomery County, how the Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning Commission was created--Brooke Lee--etc., and seems like it's something else I should think about reading.)

Index Keywords: sprawl