FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118  
119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   >>   >|  
r urban conditions, in order that these elements may function with a reasonable degree of naturalness, remain compatible with one another and with human purposes, and be available for people's enjoyment. Flood plains make good hay fields or parks, for instance, but poor sites for homes or shopping centers. Porous areas that recharge aquifers ought to be kept as much as possible under vegetation rather than pavements or buildings, if people are to have streams later and not capricious drains that are better off covered over. Steep slopes, if carved severely, usually exact a later revenge. House clusters and townhouses and apartments rightly spaced and located can let the country function even while settling on it numbers of people equivalent to those who would be there if it were hacked into a solid expanse of tiny lots. And so on. Much remains to be learned if the application of these principles is to be ideal. For example, urban hydrology--precisely what happens to the water cycle during various kinds of development, and how it might be adjusted--is a relatively new branch of study and still needs much research. But even with present knowledge, great improvement over present patterns is possible. In the hands of a few emerging experts, planning which pays attention to soils and topography and climate and special landscape features and values can be a subtle art, prescribing villages and farms and factories in the right places, making the most of native vegetation and views and places where George Washington slept and the breezes of July. Its form on a map tends toward curved lines rather than the orderly straight ones abhorred by nature. Yet in one simple form, this kind of land use planning has been practiced for many years in rural America by millions of farmers, who have cooperated with one another to their own mutual benefit in soil conservation programs to reduce erosion and to slow down the wasteful and destructive runoff of precipitation. We noted earlier a pilot urban adaptation of such programs on Pohick Creek on the metropolitan fringe in Virginia, where an effort is being made to develop a whole stream basin in accord with soil conservation principles, not only to avoid future flood damages and sedimentation and pollution but to retain natural areas, living streams, and many of the other features the land had before the city engulfed it. Even with the gaps in present knowledge and the probability that dev
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118  
119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

people

 

present

 

vegetation

 
principles
 

conservation

 

programs

 

streams

 
function
 
features
 

planning


places

 

knowledge

 
landscape
 

nature

 

abhorred

 

values

 

special

 

simple

 

practiced

 

attention


topography

 

climate

 

native

 
George
 

breezes

 

Washington

 

making

 

subtle

 

orderly

 
prescribing

villages

 

curved

 

factories

 

straight

 

accord

 

future

 
damages
 
stream
 
effort
 
develop

sedimentation

 
pollution
 

engulfed

 

probability

 

natural

 
retain
 

living

 

Virginia

 
reduce
 
benefit