ABSTRACT
A national land-use plan for a small country is feasible. The Dutch do national land-use planning very well. Federal ownership of land necessarily made the federal government a major player in determining the pattern of land development. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the settlement of the west was very much influenced by a few other decisions of the federal government. The Homestead Act of 1862 permitted settlers to claim 160-acre blocks of public land at essentially no cost if they would reside on the land for five continuous years. The railroad network that facilitated and shaped the rapid development of the United States during the nineteenth century was itself shaped, and its construction greatly accelerated, by the actions of Congress. The principle of federal subsidization of water development thus became firmly established. In 1986 Congress passed the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA).
