Creating Tomorrow - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 473

can be developed, we can add 27.5% for the Indian land and another 14% for the land held
in trust by the State. 8
Another argument used to oppose a regional or statewide network of open space is its
triple cost. First, the land has to be purchased, generally at fair market value. Once in the
public domain, it is removed from the tax rolls, and lastly, there is the cost of ongoing
maintenance. For much of the open-space system, the only answer to such concerns is
that the long-term value is worth the public investment. In other cases, in addition to land
requiring outright purchase, the open space network can be expanded wherever continued
private use can be maintained with benefit to the land. The traditional uses of forestry,
farmlands, citrus groves, ranching, and recreation are all candidates for combining private
use with public benefit. The devastation of our recent desert and forest fires has created
an urgency for more intelligent land management. Conservation groups are beginning
to work with private landowners and municipalities on everything from agriculture and
ranching to a more ecological approach to the treatment of golf courses and the design of
wetland gardens as natural systems for reclamation.
An exciting example of a public/private approach is described in Beyond the Rangeland
Conflict by Dan Dagget. This topic chronicles the story of 11 ranches where the land is
being restored in the process of being fully utilized. In his review, Gary Paul Nabhan,
the award-winning author and director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at
Northern Arizona University, states that the topic explodes, “the false dichotomies of user
versus conservator and rancher versus environmentalist.” 9 Dagget's topic portrays an
integrated, highly complex view of open space as something that can be used while being
effectively preserved wherever public/private entities are able to choose cooperation over
confrontation.
The regional open-space network I advocate is not like Portland's urban limit line that
exists as a temporary barrier to be moved as needed. Nor is it a greenbelt surrounding any
one community in the manner of a jurisdictional buffer. As much as possible, regional
open space systems should be established by way of ecologically defined edges, irregular,
inviolate, and determined by the nature of the land, and beyond the reach of political
decisions to change over time.
27.1.4 Complexity and Integration
The fourth challenge is to correct the wrong turn we took when suburban development
began to associate separation with the creation of value , including stratified housing projects,
isolated office parks, and big-box shopping centers (see Chapter 25). Everything was put
neatly in its place, easy to build, see, and sell. The creation of sustainable value requires a
far more complex integration of uses. The urban fabric will become not only more efficient,
but more alive, including proximity to agriculture and community gardens. We will come
to treat the all-out, thoughtful integration of uses as a design-based alchemy for doing
more with less (Figure 27.7).
This approach will differ greatly from suburban developments that are based on the
assumption of mutual intolerance. Because community interaction has been so intention-
ally designed out of suburbia, it would be possible for every household to dislike the oth-
ers, and all would still go reasonably well. We have so accepted this as the norm that we
do not realize what a price we pay for our lack of community. An assumed inability to
cooperate requires more paving, while offering less natural open space. The typical sub-
urban development offers more pseudo privacy with less genuine individuality and more
autonomy with less awareness, caring, and security. Just as no individual space can mean