ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the question, why do people settle the land as we do? It provides observations about the challenge of reforming the nation’s land policy. The nation’s unintentional land policy is a source of concern for those who wish to retain the use of rural land in food and fiber production, but see it threatened by other uses. Growth management is based on the premise that more land is being used than is needed for “urban uses” of residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation sites. A sophisticated version of this argument acknowledges the value to people of at least some types of separation, and a prototypical landscape is described that includes varying densities. Historians have called the demand for separation the “suburbanization movement,” although it is occurring today at the edge of cities as well as in the countryside. The costs of separation have been described and used to support recommendations for changes in policy to alter land settlement.
