The Land: More than Cosmetics

THE LAND

True or false? That the deterioration of the American landscape is continuing at a faster pace than ever before.

That the solution to the mess lies in big, bold plans that will effectively guide growth through 1985 or the year 2000.

That the proper use of open space is to structure the growth around it. Most people would say: True. But in a refreshing, optimistic and constructive book, The Last Landscape (Doubleday; $6.95), Author and Conservationist Wil liam H. Whyte firmly disagrees.

He should know. Back in the mid-1950s, about the time when his The Organization Man was published, Whyte watched with horrified wonder as his home county in Pennsylvania’s lovely Brandywine Valley was ruined by heedless real estate development. He decided he should learn more about land use and conservation. He has since be come an expert on the subject. He helped to draft conservation programs for Connecticut, California and New York, also served on President Johnson’s task force on natural beauty.

Whyte’s theories all go much farther than prettification and cosmetics. He knows that an interest in landscape, more than in any other element of the environment, can lead to resolution of larger problems. “People,” he says, “are stirred by what they can see.”

No Cliches. In effect, The Last Landscape is a how-to book. It tells how to spot open land that is worth saving and how to save it. If anything, the job is easier than ever before. There is less undeveloped land available and a widespread respect for it—a reaction against the asphalt flats and dreary subdivisions that marked the great surge of postwar building. “Outrages are educational,” says Whyte. Too, new state and federal laws designed to conserve open soace have been enacted, and many localities have devised ways of protecting or enlarging their holdings. Even subdividers have learned that it pays to cluster, rather than spread, houses over their tracts. They save money by not having to develop all of their property—and customers are happy to give up a small backyard for a large view.

Whyte is a realist. Accepting neither a vision of the future characterized by junky, chaotic growth nor a clean, green Utopia, he calmly predicts a much more likely middle course of high-density living, where the land is used more intensively and ingeniously than at present. He has no patience with grandiose answers. Year 2000 plans? “They vault over the messy present and near future” and justify themselves with unreliable statistical projections of past trends. As for self-contained “new towns,” they start with the assumption that old cities are a lost cause—despite the fact that people continue to show a marked preference for them.

Another ingrown cliche concerns the value of “green belts” that girdle some cities. On planners’ maps, green belts look wonderful. In reality, says Whyte, they have never served to contain a city’s growth or to afford useful green space for its people. If open space just sits there without a positive function such as public park, golf course, or high-grade farm, Whyte says, it will surely be lost to a competitive good cause, like housing. In fact, the true theme of The Last Landscape is contained in Whyte’s pithy phrase about open land: “Use it or lose it.”