Review by Virginia McConnell Simmons
Land Use – December 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
Cities in the Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use in America
by Bruce Babbitt
Published in 2005 by Island Press
ISBN 1-55963-093-0
WITH A READABLE STYLE of writing, former Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt’s new book examines environmental politics with emphasis on the eight years when he was architect and administrator of policy during the Clinton administration. Babbitt speaks with special insight and savvy about environmental issues and events which took place between 1993 and 2001, and he offers additional, often sharp commentary about land use needs.
But contrary to this book’s subtitle, A Vision for Land Use Planning in America, this volume is not a handbook for future planning. Other than a brief section about the current push for oil and gas production, readers will not find extensive remarks about the policies that have followed the election of a new administration in 2001. During this present period when the political pendulum has swung in a direction antithetical to environmental victories, however, Babbitt’s narrative may give hope for what can be achieved in the future
The principal title of Babbitt’s publication, Cities in the Wilderness, was used by Carl Bridenbaugh for his two-volume classic (1955) with the subtitle The First Century of Urban Life in America, 1625-1742. In that century America’s cities were indeed surrounded by wilderness. Perhaps Babbitt, schooled in geology and law, noticed Bridenbaugh’s work. But Babbitt is not a historian; rather, he emerges on these pages as an idealist, not averse to dogma. In addition to other biblical lines that are interspersed in the text, Babbitt quotes from the Old Testament’s Book of Numbers in the front of his book, citing God’s order to Moses that the common land of the Levites “shall extend from the wall of the city outward a thousand cubits all around.”
Babbitt’s implied lament is that cities in America today do not have 1,000 cubits, or any other reasonable amount of undeveloped land around their boundaries, though they should have. In his second chapter, also given the title “Cities in the Wilderness,” Babbitt calls attention to the open space surrounding Las Vegas, Nevada, and describes how this remarkable space has managed to exist.
The author also discusses other heavily populated regions and their struggles to create or preserve open space, such as Southern California’s coastal area and Tucson. But readers will regret the absence of discussions about metropolitan areas like Phoenix, Denver, and countless other sprawling cities, where land use planning has arrived too late or not at all.
The passage in 2004 in Oregon of a property-rights initiative indicates the existence of another side of the problem involving property owners and their economic expectations, which Babbitt might also have addressed more fully.
Babbitt’s first chapter offers fascinating reading about the Everglades restoration project, which he has called his greatest achievement as Secretary of Interior. Here he comments about interaction with the ever-present U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, hostile sugar growers, and Florida residents who proved to be more conservation-minded than people in some other parts of the country.
A chapter entitled “What’s the Matter with Iowa?” will arouse considerable displeasure among farmers, not just Iowans, who disagree with Babbitt’s theories about the federal government’s long-standing policies, subsidies, and subversion of fair trade in the global market. Within and beyond Iowa, Babbitt finds little that is not the matter with the farming economy in this country. “Willie Nelson, it seems, did not invent farm aid,” Babbitt observes.
Criticizing a policy that allows land to go fallow one year, only to be cultivated the next, Babbitt wants excess cropland to be incorporated into viable conservation planning. Babbitt also contends that to protect and restore desert lands, grazing should not take place on any land with less than 10 inches of annual precipitation.
Among the problems discussed in the chapter “At Water’s Edge,” are those that have resulted from dam-building, water diversion, and agriculture with calamitous effects, especially at Chesapeake Bay and in the Columbia-Snake River system. The Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers come in for the expected whacks here. Useful information is offered regarding point-source and non-point-source pollution as they affect water quality. In the aftermath of storms in the eastern United States during the autumn of 2005, readers will recognize Babbitt’s prescience in advocating the removal of old dams, such as those that created mill ponds but no longer serve their original purpose.
In a final chapter, “The Land of the Free,” the significance of the Mining Law of 1872, the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 are discussed, along with other legislation.
Throughout the volume, Babbitt the idealist proves to be Babbitt the pragmatist, too, as he describes unapologetically the strategy of using endangered species to force compliance with environmental goals and also advocates the use of incentives to induce states to comply with federal policies that otherwise might be circumvented or ignored.
Any book about the Clinton era would be incomplete without naming the national monuments and parks that were expanded or created, particularly those that received the President’s eleventh-hour signature and that Babbitt had recommended, as he himself points out. Although Black Canyon of the Gunnison is omitted, Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is among the achievements of the Babbitt years (although it was not yet finalized when these pages were written).
With so many subjects discussed either in detail or in passing, readers will be happy to find an index as well as a list of additional suggested reading for each chapter. For some readers, this volume will serve as a quick reference about the better known environmental policies and activities of the federal government in the closing years of the 20th century. For others, it will explain who this man called Bruce Babbitt really is.
