by Daniel S. Pava, FAICP

What constitutes the West that planners in the West plan in and for? In the West, land use is fundamentally tied up with environmental factors. Award-winning journalist and writer Collin Woodard, in his article “American Nations” tells us:

“…the Far West occupies the one part of the continent shaped more by environmental factors than ethnographic ones. High, dry, and remote, the Far West stopped migrating easterners in their tracks, and most of it could be made habitable only with the deployment of vast industrial resources: railroads, heavy mining equipment, ore smelters, dams, and irrigation systems. As a result, settlement was largely directed by corporations headquartered in distant New York, Boston, Chicago, or San Francisco, or by the federal government, which controlled much of the land. The Far West’s people are often resentful of their dependent status, feeling that they have been exploited as an internal colony for the benefit of the seaboard nations. Their senators led the fight against trusts in the mid-twentieth century. Of late, Far Westerners have focused their anger on the federal government, rather than their corporate masters.” (SOURCE)

Planning is an expression of humanity, embodied in the construction of towns and cities. Similarly, the impulse to protect the natural world and systems we depend upon follows both biologic necessity and transcendent connection. The built environment has always had a relationship to the natural environment, with the work of planners woven through both. Planning, zoning, and subsequent environmental laws are not an idea that arose in 20th century America. Whatever your perspective on the role of local, state and federal land use and environmental protection laws, these ideas originated anciently in the Near East. Regulating land use may have originated about 4,000 years ago in the mud brick cities of Mesopotamia with the Code of Hammurabi and the Laws of Eshnunna. For example, structural negligence leading to death of a bystander was a considered a capital offense in Babylon.

Plan of the City of Babylon, engraving from 1795

Later, Jewish legal codes addressed site design and land use issues in depth. These ancient Hebraic laws stressed ethical behavior as a part of everyday life, even in building placement and construction. For example, Deuteronomy 22:8 (circa 700 BC) required that new homes have parapets two cubits (about three feet) high to prevent accidental falls. More ecological ideas, like the idea of crop rotation and letting the earth rest by leaving fields fallow can also be found in this book. There were even laws prohibiting the felling of fruit trees during wartime.

During the Talmudic era (circa 200 AD) numerous Jewish laws and legal cases dealing with property, privacy in construction of houses and yards, and related issues were codified. There were laws about how large a yard needs to be so that it could be divided and used among the neighbors, and laws dealing with the placement of walls and windows to assure sunlight and privacy. There were laws preventing access to alleyways in certain locations. There were laws prohibiting the operation of home businesses (bakeries and dye shops) on ground floors. There were proto-euclidean laws setting forth minimum distances between incompatible uses such as a cemetery or tannery and residences (50 cubits and only on the east side of a town).

The Christian-Byzantine Empire - from late antiquity to the Middle Ages - also developed laws addressing similar concerns, derived from precedence in the ancient Near East, Greek, and later Roman laws. Islamic societies then continued this tradition and achieved a sophisticated legal system by addressing the processes of growth and change in the built environment. Evidence of these building traditions can be seen in the southwestern United States, first brought by early Spanish settlers from the Iberian Peninsula that had long been long influenced by Moorish designs. These patterns overlaid even older indigenous influences on the landscape.

One example of indigenous environmental planning with community building is seen in the ruins of Hovenweep National Monument. These impressive methodical communities held an estimated 2,500 indigenous people who designed and built advanced infrastructure including stormwater runoff catch basins and check dams to retain topsoil (see reference).

Predating the adoption of English land use traditions and laws in what is now New Mexico in the United States, during the 17th and 18th centuries, the Laws of the Indies were applied to new Spanish towns near the well-planned Native American pueblos that preceded them by centuries. These laws attempted to balance the rights and responsibilities of owning private property with the rights of the community. Long before there were national forests in the United States, there were land grants for these same areas as decreed by the King of Spain that were to be used for the public good. Some of the conflicts regarding the use of federal public lands stem from this history.

The American naturalist ethos underpinning environmental planning had its roots in influential thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries. During the era of Manifest Destiny, the American essayist, poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote in his essay “Walking” published in the Atlantic Magazine in June 1862: “The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the world.” Today, many of us practicing planning in the lands beyond the 100th Meridian would agree.

Almost one hundred years later, in 1954, the American novelist, environmentalist, and historian Wallace Stegner wrote in Beyond the Hundredth Meridian about a one-legged Civil War veteran named John Wesley Powell. Powell floated the Colorado River in a voyage of exploration, noting that Powell was one of those powerfully original and prophetic minds…”He tried to shape legal and political and social institutions so that they would accord with the necessities of the West…He tried to dissipate illusions about the West, to sweep mirage away…Long ago he accomplished great things and now we are beginning to understand him…even out West.” In fact, it was Powell who suggested that the Southwestern state boundaries should be based upon the watersheds of its great rivers.

Expedition of John Wesley Powell, 1871. Wikimedia Commons

The debate continues to this day: is nature for exploiting or venerating? John Muir said: “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”-- Our National Parks, 1901, page 56. Later, in his 1943 novel, The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Wallace Stegner encapsulated an early 20th century view of the West: “There was somewhere, if you knew where to find it, some place where money could be made like drawing water from a well, some Big Rock Candy Mountain where life was effortless and rich and unrestricted and full of adventure and action, where something could be had for nothing.” Is the Western U.S. Muir’s cathedral, or is it Stegner’s Big Rock Candy Mountain?

A few years later in 1949, American author, philosopher, scientist, and conservationist Aldo Leopold in Sand county Almanac said: “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” Leopold was instrumental in having parts of the Gila National Forest designated as the first wilderness area.

Stegner’s 1960’s “Wilderness Letter” sent to members of Congress captured the feelings of many of his fellow Americans when advocating passage of the Wilderness Act:

“What I want to speak for is not so much the wilderness uses, valuable as those are, but the wilderness idea, which is a resource in itself. Being an intangible and spiritual resource, it will seem mystical to the practical minded--but then anything that cannot be moved by a bulldozer is likely to seem mystical to them…. We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.”

Modern environmental planning arose over the past 100 years as the Federal government passed numerous laws to protect and manage its large land holdings, which are mostly found in the West. To put this in perspective, it is necessary to understand that these lands were acquired by treaties with other sovereign nations both foreign and tribal, as there were no states but only territories. According to Western Planner contributor and lawyer Elizabeth Garvin, “Our federal government controls 28 percent of the land base in the United States, down substantially from 81 percent it once held. The basis for federal ownership came as part of the organization of our federal government.” (5th Annual Carver Colloquium, State Control of Federal Lands – Legal or Not? RMLUI 25th Workshop, Denver Co.) Among the most important laws that affect environmental planning are:

Antiquities Act of 1906 – this established the federal protection and preservation of historic sites as federal policy
Organic Act of 1916 – this established the National Park Service in order to protect and preserve places protected by the Antiquities Act, and for the general enjoyment of the public – this is a uniquely American idea that has been emulated around the world. Some say it was our best idea.
Wilderness Act 1964 – this defined and set aside wilderness areas on federal lands mostly throughout the western United States. These areas restrict most human commercial activities and connect wildlife habitats.
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) - enacted in 1970, this is the nation’s environmental charter. It requires reviews such as environmental assessments and environmental impact statements and mitigations for federally funded projects. The intent of NEPA is stated in its implementing regulations: “Through comprehensive planning, well documented, NEPA provides the basis for informed decision making that protects, restores, and enhances the environment…Ultimately, of course, it is not better documents but better decisions that count. NEPA’s purpose is not to generate paperwork - even excellent paperwork - but to foster excellent action.” (40 CFR 1500.1(c))”

Throughout the West, there are common issues that are of concern to Western Planners who protect natural resources and work in communities that interface with federal lands. These issues include: access to public lands, the protection of environmentally sensitive lands and cultural and historic resources, the potential listing of endangered species, law enforcement, and constitutional arguments.

Many planners in the West work in communities that may share boundaries with wilderness areas, or are impacted by federal lands policies. There are opportunities for collaboration between local, state and federal agencies, and private land holders for improved resource management, environmental protection, and leveraging scarce budgets for the public good. Some of these could include: collaborating and cooperating to implement comprehensive plans, especially the protection of agricultural land, scenic open space, wildlife habitats, watersheds, and hazard areas such as fire-prone urban-wildland interface ecosystems; creating city/county open space programs; implementing cluster development ordinances with conservation easements; and the vacating and replatting of “zombie” subdivisions to reduce density and infrastructure costs.

Invoking echoes of John Muir, Western Planners can consider their role in making undeveloped lands in and around their jurisdictions more accessible to recreate and preserve for the following reasons: Not every wild place needs to be a wilderness; many people do not have means to access nature in the wilderness; however, there are many natural and wild places that are more accessible.

An old Yiddish proverb says “Mann Tracht, Un Gott Lacht” or, Man plans and God laughs. While God may laugh, nature smiles as planners understand and appreciate the connection between built and natural environments; between land use and land conservation. Earlier generations understood the benefits and need for planning. Planning, environmental planning and land use regulation is indeed an honorable and ancient practice and profession. Western Planners, as practitioners of the art of modern land use governance, are heirs to a long tradition of working for the common good of the community while preserving individual rights. It is a tradition as old and inherently humane as the endeavor of city-building itself.

Land Use and Environmental Planning: History & Context