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half the picture, since historically the private market has been subject 
to regulation within the institutional environment of political decision- 
making. This is the topic for discussion in the following section. 
The institutional environment 
The institutional environment of the American shoreline is 
made up of a large and diverse group of governmental units having 
some jurisdiction and control over varying amounts of coastal prop- 
erty, usually through local ownership or State authority. These units 
establish the political and legal constraints under which the private 
market operates. From this complex structure of fragmented munici- 
pal, State, and Federal responsibilities for the management of coastal 
affairs stem the barriers to effective resolution of conflicts among dif- 
ferent interests competing for the use of the same resource. This is 
partly due to a lack of cooperation between the various agencies and 
governmental units, and partly to a general ignorance of the tremen- 
dous significance and implications of coastal problems. The planning of 
public recreational services has traditionally been carried out through 
the process of local political decisionmaking, while the state of the 
techniques by which decisions are made is depressingly low. At all 
levels, shoreline recreation has encountered the common nemesis of 
all public services—‘‘the stifling effect of jurisdictional boundaries 
which, by a curious osmosis, permits the diffusion of problems through- 
out the region, while blocking any corresponding flow of governmental 
responsibility.” ** This points to the natural consequences of frag- 
mented political control. While the shoreline is obviously no respecter 
of political boundaries, its control is distributed among discrete units. 
These units are virtually forced to act irresponsibly with respect to the 
values and interest of overall society of the region due to (1) the nature 
of the demands, (2) the irregular distribution of the resources, and 
(3) the particular economic and political context within which each 
unit makes decisions. 
The aspect of demand that contributes to an irresponsible allocation 
of coastal property by local communities has to do with the ever- 
increasing mobility that brings hordes of recreationalists to any 
richly endowed area within an expanding radius of urban areas. This, 
combined with the irregular distribution of these areas within the 
region, results in a steady flow of recreation seekers to prime sites 
from nearby towns, other States, and even more distant regions. The 
severe consequences of this situation are described by the ORRRC:* 
First, there is no logical place in the conventional government structure where 
responsibility to deal with this mercurial problem has been fixed. The problem 
certainly transcends the local community; but we find it also overflowing the 
region and the State, and at the very top, it spills out of the Nation. Then, the 
richly endowed community finds it increasingly difficult to haveits exclusive claim 
to these riches recognized * * *. What happens, in effect, is that the resource-rich 
communities find themselves exporting tremendous volumes of free recreation 
services, frequently at a substantial social cost to themselves from the operation 
and maintenance of facilities and from the debasement of the recreation facilities 
to their own residents. One reaction has been to wall out the problem by restricting 
the use of the resource: Public beaches confined to the use of local residents, 
stream banks, and wooded areas taken over by private ‘‘clubs.’’ Carried to an 
illogical extreme, as such things sometimes are, the end result of this process is that 
a few have superlative opportunities for outdoor recreation, while the great 
43 Tbid., reference 33; p. 84. 
44 Thid., reference 33; p. 86. 
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