elopers and builders are not going to
cooperate as fully and eagerly as farmers, it offers much hope. For it
may well betide a time when urban planners in general will have the
vision and authority, together with the reinforced knowledge, to subject
all new development to its basic guiding precept--a respect for the way
the landscape works. It is getting to be far more possible now than it
was in the past to say, in relation to a given place: "This is how
development ought to proceed."

In the ring of counties nearest Washington, all of them much lacerated
by sprawl that has been gobbling up some 24,000 acres of peripheral
countryside each year, respect for the way the vanishing landscape works
has been growing by leaps and bounds. The authority to translate it into
good practices, however, is much hampered by the complexities of
metropolitan reality. Officially endorsed plans exist for these
counties, or for parts of them, which show quite a lot of regard for
soils and topography and their appropriate use. But frequently these
plans are of necessity a mass of compromises. They have had to be
adjusted drastically to fit in with existing development, road networks,
sewage lines, and such things, which seldom are located in accordance
with an ecological ideal. They are encrusted with concepts from older
plans not based in landscape principles. Differing views or interests on
opposite sides of municipal or county boundary lines may gut them. Money
to buy needed open space--the only way to ensure its protection--is
usually short. And legal institutions that ought to be on the side of
good planning sometimes get in its way.

Zoning, for example, is an indispensable tool for implementing planning,
but too weak for some metropolitan situations and often too inflexible
to meet certain needs. If essential open space has been protected only
by zoning, astronomical increases in its speculative value may generate
enough pressure on zoning boards to change the category, as happened
last year on upper Rock Creek. This is particularly true in view of
metropolitan plans' inevitably hodgepodge nature, which makes them
somewhat arbitrary and vulnerable to attack. Bribery and
personal-interest scandals often are rooted in zoning matters.
Furthermore, residential zoning of the standard minimum-lot-size sort,
not adapted to cluster housing and such sophistications, may actually
encourage sprawl and rectilinear violation of the landscape by