e ownership is the kind of control that is being exercised--by private
interests rather than by government--in the promising "new towns," where
certain individuals and groups are attempting to use industrial-type,
long-term financing in the purchase and development of large tracts on
which strong and careful planning, involving everything from industry to
fish ponds, can be enforced from scratch. Perhaps the most famous single
example of this kind of thing is Reston, Virginia, which is being built
on over 7000 acres of pleasant Piedmont countryside in northwestern
Fairfax County. It has aroused hope across the nation in people
concerned with such things, for if private capital can go to work in
this enlightened fashion and still come out with a profit, the
implications for the future are enormous. Like any pioneering venture,
it has run into some troubles, and it lately suffered a shift in
management. But it is still being steered toward the same goal of
environmental grace and decency and seems likely to arrive there.

The attractiveness of such places to people disillusioned with standard
sprawl is attested by the fact that other developers, having
incorporated some of the Reston techniques--some recreational water,
some clustering of dwellings with communal open space between, some
amenities like underground wiring--are tending to call their latest
subdivisions "new towns" too. Many of them want to do things right, and
if it can be proved that doing things right will pay off as well as
doing them wrong, a certain amount of automatic improvement in the
quality of suburbanization can be expected. However, it must be noted
that the scale on which most developers can afford to operate, and the
market scarcity of suitable large tracts of land even when major capital
is available and the aims are noble ones, do not often give them control
of adequate natural units of territory in which whole planning can mean
what it should. Most such planning is going to have to continue to come
from governmental bodies, and the main hope must be that it will keep
improving, find stronger tools, and be reinforced and stimulated by laws
and programs from higher up.

Sprawl as a problem farther out

Throughout the Basin where centers of population and industry are on the
jump, sprawl is also gnawing away at the countryside. Given our present
pace of change, many Basin towns will soon become Basin cities, and
around each, if they are lef