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Land Use Classifications–An Historical Perspective |
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Albert Z. Guttenberg, AICP
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© & Author Info |
In exploring the history of the subject, it doesn't require great perspicuity to see that interest in land use classification is not a steady-state phenomenon. Rather, it is a sometime thing, waxing and waning, and responding in its substance to crises that arise in the public sphere, crises for which solutions are sought through land use control. Accordingly, I have organized this account in terms of seven such crises.
Settlement: The crisis caused by the opening up of the continent to settlement.
Conservation: The crisis induced by the settling of the arid west.
Urbanization: The crisis of explosive city growth in the early years of the present century.
Depression: The economic crisis of the agricultural sector in the 1920s and of the national economy in the 1930s.
Suburbanization: The crisis of the post-WW II exploding metropolis.
Cultural Revolution: The upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s which brought environmentalism to center stage.
Post-Modernism: The questioning of all standards and meanings including the meaning of land use classification. Earlier epochs classified. The present era asks, "What do we mean by land use?"
What has this somewhat loose and wide-ranging survey taught us? We have seen that land use classification theory and practice is not described by a straight line. Rather it follows the zigs and zags of American land policy. Each era—one might say each crisis—in our national history has produced land classifications in line with its own concerns and requirements. To be sure, some long-term trends are discernible but even the longest of these are reversible, such as the movement from the classifying of public lands to the classifying of private lands, a trend which is even now facing a challenge from the property rights movement. No one can be sure where the action will jump next. The most we can do is scan the horizon for signs of change. What can already be seen in the offing? Perhaps multi-culturalism. The day may not be too distant when land will be classified multiculturally. Special land use zones may be established with different legal frameworks to reflect different ethnic statuses, customs and values.
The complete working paper, to be published by the American Planning Association, will be available at http://www.planning.org/lbcs.
Albert Z. Guttenberg, AICP
Professor Emeritus
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign