t to grow in the rudimentary traditional
patterns, the devastation that has taken place around Washington will
reproduce itself. In many places it already has a good start.

Some rural counties and small towns have developed a satellitic
relationship to the larger centers of population, and even around others
that are distant from urban uproar, sprawl is beginning to find a
congenial form for itself in vacation colonies of "second homes" in
scenic places whose remoteness, together with a smaller and more settled
population of Americans, used to be their staunch protection. Under the
stimulus of State and Federal encouragement, mainly quite recent and to
some extent tied in with this Potomac effort, most counties in the Basin
have arrived at some awareness of the need for land-use planning. In
many farming communities, the seeds of this awareness were planted long
since by the Soil Conservation Service. But rural folk often lack a
sense of the urgency of the need, an understanding of dangers and aims
under urban or semi-urban conditions, money with which to operate, and
the detachment that is requisite for making right decisions.

Planning in most such places ought to be relatively simple and
acceptable, for in the long run most people would be better off for it,
economically and in terms of the surroundings. But it is still hard to
sell to average rural and small-town populations, who have always been
able to take trees, views, clean water, and elbow room for granted, and
hence can maintain the staunchly individualistic view that anyone ought
to be able to do whatever he likes with his land, that growth is good,
and that anything that interferes with any manifestation of it is bad.
Therefore, too often the planning, if any, that goes into effect before
the bulldozers move in like hungry behemoths from another planet is
likely to be meager and heavily weighted in favor of the easy, standard,
massive sort of development that local governments close to the centers
of trouble are beginning to comprehend and, in the face of immensely
greater odds, to take measure against.

Though the ugliness and dreary crowded sameness with which standard
sprawl replaces decent landscapes are reason enough for opposing it,
other good reasons exist as well, perhaps especially in rural counties.
It has been customary for local promoters of such development to
celebrate the additional tax revenues that new inhabitants are going to
pour into