-
Land for Cities, Scenery for City People: Managing Urbanization in the American Grain
- University of Washington Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
77 Land for Cities, Scenery for City People Managing Urbanization in the American Grain carl abbott C ities and their residents make multiple claims on their places and regions. At one end of the conceptual spectrum there is the most basic claim of all: Underpinning all discussions of urban planning , development policy, and growth management is the expectation that cities have the simple right to exist, that the residents of concentrated settlements are justified in converting natural landscapes or rural land to workshops and dwelling places. We realize how axiomatic this claim is only when the contrary message demands attention, whether expressed in the actions of the monomaniacal Khmer Rouge or in the writings of the bucolic utopians who regard urbanization as an original sin. At a far remove are the complex ways in which cities (or their promoters and spokespersons) craft an urban identity from characteristics of a surrounding rural region. Such conceptual appropriation is certainly the rule rather than the exception in western North America. Portlanders use telephoto magic to incorporate distant Mount Hood into nearly every promotional image. Denver claims to be the Mile High Capital of the Rocky Mountain empire. Phoenix lies in the Valley of the Sun (at least since advertising firms coined the slogan in the 1930s). Fort Worth is “where the West begins,” and Fort Worthers protest when east-tilted Dallas erects a herd of oversized bronze longhorns to proclaim its own image of “westernness.” For a discussion of “land in the West,” however, some of the most interesting claims lie in the middle ground between the foundational and carl abbott 78 the rhetorical. This chapter briefly inventories and then categorizes the different demands that cities as civic entities make on their sites and regions . It then discusses the ways in which various land-control regimes respond to these public claims. The first set of claims revolves around the presumed right to utilize—to urbanize—a particular place or landscape. These claims underlie the creation of towns, cities, and their larger metropolitan areas as distinct configurations of buildings, roads, pipes, and wires. A second set of claims involves the presumed right to use resources at a distance. This cluster justifies the enlistment or conscription of a surrounding hinterland in the fulfillment of metropolitan needs. claims that cities make Cities are economic machines that make civilization possible. Their purpose is to increase the efficiency of production by facilitating the exchange and processing of goods and ideas. In so doing, cities reduce the costs of necessities and luxuries. Cities more than pay for themselves by making it easier for human beings to gain protection from the cold, shelter from the rain, and respite from hunger. Were we to abjure cities and the comforts of civilized society, we would be huddled with Lear on the windswept heath, crying into the storm. This is the trade-off that legitimates urban claims on their landscapes and their environs. Twentiethcentury Americans seldom perform the explicit calculus, but most accept that the economic benefits of cities outweigh the virtues of the fields or forests that these cities replaced. Knowing that time will soon enough have its way, few of us are rushing to cast down the walls, rip up the pavements , and invite the fireweed and thistles to repossess our towns and cities. Only on the margins do communities explicitly weigh the relative virtues of a few more subdivisions against a few more berry fields or orange groves. The first cluster of claims can be summarized as the right to build. On the frontiers of North America, the founders of Euro-American cities asserted title and occupied portions of the landscape for the express purpose of town making. As outposts grew into cities, they took land out of its natural state or out of primary production to serve the urban purposes of processing , exchanging, and negotiating, and to house the city dwellers who performed these functions. North Americans expect a successful city to Land for Cities, Scenery for City People 79 be physically expansive. Its commerce should swell in volume and reach. Its factories should serve expanding markets and spin off new products. Its universities should create new research enterprises and attract new students . These growing activities require new factories, wharves, rail yards, office towers, classroom buildings, highways, parking lots, and houses. In this context of growth, city makers assume the right not simply to exist but to grow horizontally by converting rural and resource land to urban uses. The...