LETTER OF INTRODUCTION 
The MIT national land-use policy project was created in the spring 
of 1970 as a vehicle to involve students and faculty at MIT and 
neighboring universities including Boston University, Tufts Uni- 
versity, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in— 
(1) A broad interdisciplinary study that would borrow from many 
fields of study, promote their interaction, and try to mtegrate their 
expertise at the interface relating to land-use policy. 
Our groups included biologists, ecologists, physicists, civil engineers, 
mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, management and operations 
research students, political scientists, and lawyers. This interaction 
was particularly valuable since it seems to us that interdisciplinary 
teams will in the future play a greater role in the formulation and solu- 
tions of our Nation’s, indeed the world’s, increasingly complex 
problems. There is a strong need for us as a Nation to develop a team 
capability in order to devise effective and comprehensive systemwide 
solutions to our problems. We welcome the National Science Founda- 
tion’s interdisciplinary problem research program and are hopeful 
of its contributions toward developing this capability. 
(2) An opportunity to become involved in an interactive fashion 
with members and staff of the Senate Interior Committee and the 
Congressional Research Service on a major issue of national impor- 
tance, the development of national land use policies with special 
regard given toward building environmental criteria into such policies. 
We would like to point out the project’s timeliness in that the Senate 
Interior Committee had introduced preliminary legislation, referred 
to as the National Land Use Policy Act of 1970, on January 29, 1970, 
so that our project had a focus which provided a clear sense of urgency. 
We also feel that the project was particularly useful and interesting 
to both parties because of the high degree of close interaction that 
developed between the student-faculty group and the Senate com- 
mittee and staff as witnessed through Boston visits of the committee 
staff on two separate occasions, through Washington visits by the 
student study director, Michael L. Telson, to three sets of hearings on 
the legislation, and through very frequent telephone and mail contacts. 
We feel that on both of the above counts the project was an excellent 
learning experience for those involved. We hope that the project will 
serve as a model for future cooperative efforts. 
We have included for publication within some of the papers that 
were written for the project. We have taken the liberty of freely 
excerpting from them when appropriate and have broadly classified 
the papers into areas involving aspects of land use management 
problems. 
The papers by Mr. Dennis W. Ducsik have been obtained through 
the courtesy of the MIT Press that will publish the papers in full as 
part of the book ‘Project NECAP” to appear in the fall of 1971. 
Project NECAP (New England Coastal Area Planning) involved an 
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