482 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



fellows in the eye be he who he is industrialist, merchant, de- 

 veloper, Christian, Jew or agnostic. 



Yet growth is inevitable and must be accommodated. What rules 

 should guide the nature and location of development, the preserva- 

 tion of natural processes and beauty? Certainly not the prevailing 

 process which, observed dispassionately, would seem to suggest that 

 water is made to be befouled, air to be polluted, marshes to be filled, 

 streams to be culverted, rivers to be dammed, farms subdivided, for- 

 ests felled, flood plains occupied and wildlife eradicated. 



If one examined the face of man-made America as a product of 

 conscious choice it would appear that we preferred a dilute soup of 

 dead bacteria in a chlorine solution to clean water, an admixture of 

 lead, hydrocarbons and carcinogens in our air, selected beautiful 

 rivers for dumps, junkyards and sewage disposal, and had formulated 

 a national policy for the eradication of natural beauty and integrated 

 this into policies for highways, housing, industry, transportation and 

 agriculture. It would further appear as if anarchy and ugliness 

 were the criteria of excellence for cities. The automobile was pre- 

 eminent over man. Open space in cities was a positive evil to be 

 eradicated. God's Own Junkyard the chosen symbol of our time 

 and society. 



Clearly this is not the conscious choice of the American people, 

 not the physical image of democracy, not the face of The Great 

 Society. What simple rules can lead to a fairer image? Some 

 guide lines are necessary so that men of good will and intelligence 

 in both private and public domains can contribute to preservation 

 and creation of noble and ennobling environments. Land use regu- 

 lations have a high priority. They cannot ensure art but they can 

 avert folly, avarice and mindless destruction. They can provide 

 the basis and the context for excellence. These should devolve in 

 the first case from an understanding of nature and natural processes, 

 the values of land, its air, water and biotic resources, their roles, 

 their tolerance and intolerance to man and his artifacts. 



A research project which I have conducted for the Urban Renewal 

 Administration on the development of criteria for selecting metro- 

 politan open space for the Philadelphia Metropolitan area can il- 

 lustrate this approach. Given abundant land and choice, given an 

 understanding of the major physiographic regions, their ecological 

 communities, their permissiveness and prohibition to development, 

 then certain restraints, upon land use, based upon natural processes, 



