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Book Review
| A Rediscovered Frontier: Land Use and Resource Issues in the New West. By Philip L. Jackson and Robert Kuhlken. Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO, New York, Toronto, and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006. xv + 265 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, and index. Paper $29.95.
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| Another homestead movement is underway in the West. The recent settlers are not filing their land claims to raise crops or livestock, but rather to reside within eyeshot of the region's scenery and to build a home (often a second home, leisure estate, or corporate retreat) near its recreational amenities. While the West has always attracted more than its fair share of adventurers and retirees, the sweeping economic and technological changes of the past two decades have freed recent arrivals from urban support systems, thus opening up previously remote or seasonally inhospitable rural locations and small towns to fast-paced, unplanned residential and commercial development. The unfortunate result is wasteful and unsightly sprawl and the retreat of a working landscape. Another outcome is the uneven distribution of economic benefits, seen in the loss of affordable housing and the multiplication of socially exclusive (and water-profligate) golf communities and resort destinations. On this rediscovered frontier, the contemporary consumer's search for authentic experience facilitates invidious new forms of resource extraction. One hardly requires a sophisticated postmodern sensibility to appreciate the irony of a residential development in southern Utah featuring faux concrete waterfalls and streambeds colored to match the red rocks of the arid canyon country. |
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Geographers Philip L. Jackson and Robert Kuhlken, alarmed by these truly revolutionary land-use changes, have assembled this comprehensive and engagingly written survey of contemporary growth patterns in the eleven westernmost states. They describe developments currently taking place, predict where in the future new growth corridors are likely to emerge, and offer examples of successful planning precedents. They also set forward a compelling case for improved cooperation at the grass roots. In the spirit of self-determination, zoning and community development decisions have been delegated to local authorities, but recent trends have far outpaced local knowledge and planning capacity. The authors argue, however, that better information and a participatory process will allow current residents to develop the political consensus and the administrative machinery required for balancing future growth with community livability and protection for traditional resource users. The book also contains a chapter examining the recent history of opposition to land-use planning in Oregon, where the "takings" issue has gained a measure of political legitimacy despite faulty legal and moral reasoning. |
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The authors hope that A Rediscovered Frontier will prod communities into anticipating change instead of simply reacting to it, and they have labored diligently to present an array of specific details. As a result, the general reader is occasionally mired down, but the store of interesting information mostly outweighs the trouble of sifting through it. This reader, for example, was especially intrigued to discover that the growth engines of the New West are the national forests, monuments, and parks. Demand for private land, in other words, is greatest in the gateway communities to the public lands. This suggests that a conservation movement for the early twenty-first century will indeed require a script far different from that of the early twentieth century. |
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Sarah Phillips is assistant professor of History at Columbia University and author of This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal (Cambridge 2007). |
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