Bridging the Gap: Incorporating Science-Based Information Into Land Use Planning

• Author: Bruce A. Stein
• Pages: 42-53

chapter three

Bridging the Gap:

Incorporating Science-Based

Information Into Land Use Planning

Bruce A. Stein

Land use planning, in one form or another, has been occurring since the colo-

nization and establishment of the United States. Historically, planning has

tended to focus on the allocation of land and other resources in a way designed

to balance the protection and advancement of societal values, such as com-

munity health and well being, with the rights of landowners to use and benef‌it

from their holdings. Incorporating ecological considerations into this planning

balance was a fairly late arrival on the scene, marked in a serious way by Ian

McHarg’s 1969 landmark book Design With Nature.1This generally coincided

with the public’s broader interest in environmental protection, resulting from

such things as the broad indictment of pesticides contained in Silent Spring,2

an oil spill dirtying beaches in Santa Barbara, smog enveloping the Los Ange-

les basin, and chemical pollutants igniting on the Cuyahoga River. The launch

of the modern environmental era was subsequently formalized in public pol-

icy through passage of milestone federal legislation, such as the Clean Water

Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

While some in the scientif‌ic community had long been involved in study-

ing the effects of land use and other human activities on what is now known

as biological diversity, most scientif‌ic work hewed closely to traditional disci-

plinary lines. Ecological researchers often worked specif‌ically to avoid human

inf‌luences, seeking to examine organisms or ecosystems untainted by inter-

ference from people. As an example, the Ecological Society of America’s

Committee on the Preservation of Natural Conditions—the predecessor to The

Nature Conservancy—was chartered originally to identify pristine areas where

ecological research could be carried out unhindered by human inf‌luence. Indeed,

42