128 The City's Challenge in Resource Use 



prunes. This looks like "shifting to the higher use" measured by our 

 private economic yardstick, which is generally pretty dependable. 

 The action of the "owner" is certainly rational for him, especially 

 when you look at his land taxes. 



The real damage in the United States is probably not agricultural 

 or economic. The loss in the change-over from orchards, vineyards, 

 truck gardens, and dairy farms to building lots falls not upon the old 

 or the new owners; it falls on the public. It is the urban folks who 

 lose the sight and knowledge of self-sustaining green belts. Where 

 we wish to preserve these, we shall need prompt action, as William 

 Whyte has recently suggested. ^^ 



Of course concentration of population in urban centers and in 

 great metropolitan complexes takes less total acreage than if the 

 same population were spread out over rural farm, nonfarm, and 

 small village settlements, though we must make some allowance for 

 the fact that many rural, as well as suburban, homes are on land that 

 would not be farmed in any case. In logic, however, urbanization 

 should not produce an increased land shortage, but just the opposite. 

 Ultimately urbanization will make possible the true conservation of 

 land. However, this possibility is not now being realized, and the 

 urban expansions now are sprawled out at the expense of much eco- 

 nomically useful and beautiful acreage, while much of the vacated 

 acreage is found unused right in the city centers and in far-scattered 

 and submarginal rural regions, and a great deal of land between the 

 ribbons and the sprawls is spoiled for decades. Thus urbanization 

 does increase the pressure on land as a resource, and accentuates the 

 need for planned controls and for vigorous programs of land conser- 

 vation and use. 



Flood control. Flood and erosion control are generally discussed 

 as a water and land problem in terms of preserving the soil, protect- 

 ing vast farming areas, conserving water, facilitating navigation, and 

 saving human and animal life.^^ Flood and erosion control are also 

 an urban necessity. It is when men are settled in dense urban pat- 



1^ Whyte, op. cit. 



^* Gilbert F. White, Human Adjustment to Floods, Department of Geography, 

 Paper 29 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1945); Commission on Organiza- 

 tion of the Executive Branch of the Government (Hoover Commission), Water 

 Resources and Power (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1955). 



