An analogous example can be found in the field of game management. A given territory can carry X elk. At X+1 elk, the ecosystem collapses. The same is true for deer, rabbits, mice or any other indicator species in a given ecosystem.

The density and location of urban dwellings in the Countryside is an example of the tipping point or trigger of a punctuated equilibrium.

With respect to urban dwellings, this limit is expressed as one of the 95 percent/5 percent Rules.(2) As urban sociologist and author William H. Whyte has pointed out, having a few more urban dwellings within a given area fundamentally changes the economic and social structure.

 

The fundamental difference between changing the intensity of settlement inside the Clear Edge and outside the Clear Edge is addressed below.

 

Fundamental Change in Society

 

In the case of of the Fauquier County Dot Map, the problem is not the mere the presence of twice as many dots in 2000 as in 1950. Each dot represents 10 people. Here's the critical difference: In 1950, a household in the Countryside was likely to have close to five occupants and in 2000 about three. Twice as many dots is likely to mean three times as many dwellings. Moreover, each household has more cars, and so twice as many dots may mean four times as many cars. Of course, each of those cars is driven far more miles in 2000 than in 1950.

Understanding that twice as many dots could make a critical difference and that twice as many dots indicates more than twice as many households or dwellings (and even more cars) still only partially captures the critical nature of the scattered dots in the Countryside. It is not so much the absolute number of people, households or even cars, it is the vast change over the past 

50 year period in what each of these citizens does on a daily basis.  There is a fundamental change in the services and support each household requires and the energy it consumes. 

To extend Peter Drucker’s observations concerning the profound and fundamental economic and social changes that have taken place in the past century, consider that 200 years ago, the United States was a nation where the vast majority of  working citizens were engaged in agriculture pursuits. The second largest single category of employment was domestic help. Most households outside the major urban centers were largely self-sufficient. They produced much of the food they consumed and shelter and tools they required. 

 

Even the very small minority of citizens living in big urban places (aka, cities) often had kitchen gardens, root cellars and places outside of their urban enclaves to produce food, keep animals and repair equipment.    

 

It is often said that at the time of the first U.S. Census in 1790, 95 percent of the population consisted of farmers. The percentage was never quite that high because even at the end of the 18^th century, the Industrial Revolution had started to urbanize human activity on a massive scale. There was a substantial urban infrastructure located in hamlets and villages that supported agriculture, though this activity was not yet considered “urban.” 

 

One hundred and ten years later in 1900, the majority of working citizens were still farmers and domestics, but others had taken jobs in manufacturing, fabrication, assembly, transportation, construction and financial services. However, many households, especially those in the Countryside and in small urban enclaves serving the Countryside, were still largely self-sufficient. 

 

In just eight generations, areas like Virginia's Northern Piedmont, where Warrenton-Fauquier is located, have morphed from a place in which farm families made up 90 percent of the population to the present in which less than three percent of the population is living in farm families as defined by the U.S. Census.

Almost no households are self-sufficient. Even farm families now depend on processed food and most urban services on a daily basis.

Chicken for Dinner

 

Refocusing on the dot map, the big difference between the dots in 1950 and the dots in 2000 is what the citizens represented by those dots do every day -- not just how they make a living but how they acquire goods, services and recreation.  To illustrate this change, consider that in 1950 , when many households wanted chicken for dinner, someone went outside and chased down a chicken.  Now they drive a car to get a chicken at a supermarket or a restaurant, or someone delivers it already prepared.

 

If we apply the chicken-dinner scenario to every activity of each of the three households represented by every dot, then the vast scope of change that characterizes the distribution of urban households across the Countryside is clear.

Where and how citizens earn a living, acquire goods and services, go when they need something replaced or repaired and all the other reasons they travel through the Countryside have changed.

Like all urban residents, those who live in the Countryside now rely on advertising to tell them what they need and where to drive to get it. Urban residents, whether they live on a 1/10-acre lot or a 100-acre lot, do not take out a piece of leather, a stick of wood or a length of strap iron and fix a tool, appliance or vehicle. They drive to get a new one.  Occasionally, they drive the broken item to a repair shop or buy a new part. Sometimes they order a replacement from a catalog or on the Internet and someone delivers it to them. Whatever they do, it involves fundamentally new activities, and travel on someone’s part is almost always involved. That is why scattered dots do not mean the same thing in 2000 as they meant 50 or even 20 years ago.

 

Maintaining the Countryside

 

To preserve the Countryside in Warrenton-Fauquier and other high-quality areas, there is a need for some citizens to live in the Countryside. Some dots in the Countryside are necessary to maintain what makes the Countryside attractive and viable. It is not only the forested hills but also the rolling meadows, fields, hedgerows, fences, barns and livestock that create the compelling Countryside panoramas for which the Piedmont and similar areas are renown. These are not “natural areas.” They are manmade and maintained. 

 

Some of the open vistas were here before colonization started. That is because Native Americans burned “plains” to create grazing opportunities for deer, elk and bison. The natural climax condition in the Mid-Atlantic bio-region is the Northern Hardwood Forest. It takes time and resources to keep the forest from springing back as a result of natural succession.

The attractive feature of the Countryside is a landscape that must be continually maintained -- at an considerable expenditure of resources.

Again, Warrenton-Fauquier provides a good point of reference. At some places within Warrenton-

Fauquier today, the view is similar to the pastoral scenes captured by Currier and Ives. Parts of Warrenton-Fauquier today look similar to the way much of Fairfax County looked like in 1850, and Chester County, Pa., looked in 1920. 

 

In Fairfax County following the Civil War, much of the farmland was abandoned. This was in large part because the soil was worn out by over-cropping.  The abandoned land reforested naturally. When projects like Burke Centre and Fair Lakes in Fairfax County were built ‘in the trees’ in the 70s and 80s, they were constructed on abandoned farmland that had naturally reforested. The same is true for much of Reston, Oakton, etc. 

 

In Chester County (1920-1970), the rolling agricultural Countryside was purchased and subdivided for urban houses because it was so attractive before the houses were built. William H. Whyte’s book The Last Landscape describes this process and first articulated the 95 percent/5 percent Rule.

 

Over the past half century in both Fairfax and Chester Counties, the urban homeowners of the 2-, 3-, 5-, 10-, 20- or 50-acre lots have transformed the bucolic vistas of rolling pastureland. Yard landscaping and natural reforestation have changed the face of the previously open countryside. The scenery in both counties today consists of big houses among the remaining trees with big roads to get the occupants to big office buildings and big shopping centers.

 

Back to the Future

 

What he'd like Warrenton-Fauquier to like like 50 years from now, a Warrenton-Fauquier official said recently, is what it looked like 50 years ago. Most would agree that it is not possible to roll back the clock. However, the image conjured by those words appeals to many, and this observation is a good way to put the “all growth is progress” mindset in perspective. 

 

There is another important aspect of this observation. To maintain the open vistas provided by agricultural activity 50 years ago, it took more labor and a larger rural population that it would today. With better equipment, farms require fewer people to mow, crop and maintain the Countryside.  Perhaps the ideal to maintain the Countryside in 2003 would be one-half the dots there were 50 years ago.

 

Another condition of the Countryside -- the presence of forested and reforested land -- is also worth noting. What one sees, especially in the summer, is a wall of green on both sides of the road. The wall of green, as seen in Fairfax and Chesterfield Counties, makes hiding urban dwellings easier. In their natural state, these forested acres require even smaller populations to maintain. Hiding urban dwellings in the trees, of course, turns forests into very low or low density urban areas.

 

It's Not Just Urban Dwellings that Erode Countryside Resources

 

Scattered dwellings for full-time urban residents are not the only problem. Second homes, weekend places and even “primitive camps” have a detrimental impact on the Countryside, and eventually most of them morph to become full-time abodes.

 

Attachment Two is a portion of 1987 map of Hardy County, W.V. This map, distributed by a real estate agency in the county, shows permanent residences as squares and summer residences as triangles. Unlike Warrenton-Fauquier and Lancaster, Pa., Hardy County has a low "institutional capacity." One result is that there are few maps available. Observation suggests that many of the summer residences have become year-round homes, many of which are occupied by recent retirees.

 

 

While new retirees do not generate some of conflicts caused by other urban residents, there are problems associated with so many scattered retirement homes. Younger retirees maintain large yards and scattered urban life styles. As they grow older they require more social services that are much more costly to provide in scattered locations. Eventually, they sell these dwelling units to younger families, in which case they become no different from any other urban dwelling.

 

Even more harmful are the scattered employment sites. Every job outside a balanced urban enclave is the center point of a 45-mile radius for potentially scattered urban dwellings and services. That is especially true in sub-regions with low unemployment rates.

 

Even jobs directly related to extensive, non-urban land uses (e.g., agriculture and forestry) have the potential to generate commuters if there is not on-site housing or if some of the residents of the household are employed elsewhere. Because there will be some unavoidable urban impact from any agricultural or forest enterprise, it is imperative that pure urban households and jobs sites are charged the full cost of locating in the Countryside. In this way, scatteration will be discouraged.

 

Tourism

 

Urban tourist attractions in the countryside are problematic. These urban land uses are touted as economic development solutions. Auto-dependent tourism is a dangerous tiger to ride in the Countryside. 

 

In the small, attractive urban enclaves within the Countryside, "Main Street" becomes a collection of antique shops rather than "High Streets" with shops and businesses serving the community. Of even more concern is that in the Countryside, auto-

dependent tourism presents a significant conundrum:

If only a few visitors drive to Countryside destinations, they do not support a critical mass of non-urban recreation activities.  If a lot of visitors drive out to the Countryside, their collective actions erode the reason to go there in the first place.

This raises the point that recreation for an urban society is an urban activity. This is true for Countryside and even for "wilderness." But for urban populations as "wilderness" packers, guides, fire and rescue workers would have no work.

 

Nowhere in the territory surveyed for this report is the impact of rampant “visit the Countryside” tourism more apparent than in Lancaster County, Pa. Extensive efforts at the state, county and municipal level have been expended to preserve agricultural land uses. Agricultural products and activities draw throngs of auto-borne visitors and large trucks to bring in supplies and distribute products, overwhelming the transportation system. Autos, trucks and horse-drawn buggies are ensnared in long queus and frequent gridlock. Building more roads or widening existing ones will make conditions worse.

 

Promoting tourism via private vehicles to wineries or other scattered urban tourist destinations presents a strategic challenge. A parade of vans and SUVs to a tasting or craftsperson’s open house, plus the amplified music to entertain them, converts a tranquil glen into a block party. Just the existence of quiet, narrow roads attracts pods of muffler-

challenged motorcycles roaring down historic byways and through bucolic hamlets. 

 

Clustering tourism destinations at appropriate locations within urban enclaves, providing shared vehicle systems and extensive pedestrian (including bicycle) access and other alternatives are the key to not wiping out the very amenity that tourist come to enjoy.

 

Who Benefits from Viable Countryside?

 

The open Countryside benefits not only those who live there but also those who pass through and live nearby. A sustainable Countryside is required for all citizens –- those who live there and those who live inside the Clear Edges around urban enclaves large and small. These urban residents directly and indirectly enjoy the vistas of rolling fields and forested hills beyond the urban fabric. Urban residents also enjoy the cool, filtered air, potable water and products sold at farmers markets. The economic, social and physical products and relationships of a healthy Countryside have been recognized since the first urban areas were create 10,000 years ago.

On the other hand, citizens do not need, in fact cannot support, urban residents living at very low low densities in the Countryside.

Scattered Urban Dwellings Yield Auto-Dominated, Strip Development

The scattered "dots" on the map today represent very different land uses than dots representing population did 50 years ago. In place of largely self-sufficient farming households there are scattered urban land uses. These new uses require places to drive and park their cars in order to work or acquire goods and services. "Sub"urban employment and service uses have expanded to match the changing character of the scattered urban land uses in the Countryside."

The cumulative impact of scattered dots -- urban households -- is auto-dependent (aka "strip") development, period.

Rather than live in compact urban components of Balanced Communities, urbanites in the Countryside require high capacity road networks, auto-oriented commercial, and service uses with places to park their cars once they get their. Scattered urban dwellings on one-, two-, 10-, 20- or 50-acre lots yield retail and service agglomerations known as “strip development.”  Simply stated, one cannot have low density auto-dependent settlement patterns at one end of a trip and compact, urbane development patterns at the other end.

When all the scattered households generate all the trips in all their vehicles, they all need a place to park their cars. Author and lecturer Tom Hylton notes that there are seven parking places for every automobile. This means that twice as many dots in 2000 require 20 +/- times as many parking places as there were 50 years ago.

 

There is no alternative to strip, auto-dominated development patterns if urban dwellings and other land uses are scattered in the Countryside.

Zoning, subdivision regulations, easements, Adequate Public Facilities Ordinances and every other conventional land-use strategy has resulted in, and will continue to result in, land subdivision. The inevitable result is the scatteration of urban dwellings and supporting urban support land uses located in the Countryside and in strip developments. Current public policies and actions intended to mitigate the impact of growth and "sprawl" wind up compounding dysfunctional “sub”urban and “sub”country human settlement patterns.

 

Too Much Land for Urban Use

 

Just as there is excess land set aside for urban uses inside the Clear Edge, there is too much land designated for urban land uses outside the Clear Edge in the Countryside. 

 

During the '60s and '70s, the federal government encouraged and subsidized planning at the municipal level through the “701 Planning Program.” Most jurisdictions within 100 miles of the cores of major New Urban Regions, adopted Comprehensive (“Master”) Plans, zoning ordinances and subdivision regulations as part of a 701 Planning Program. While municipal planning is not a bad idea, the results can be very bad if there is not a subregional and regional framework for this effort.

 

Without quantified guidance from subregional and regional plans that quantified the amount of land needed for urban development, especially the amount for non-residential land uses, each municipality planned for whatever it wanted. First-generation plans tended to zone the Countryside as "Agricultural," with one-acre urban dwellings as a permitted use.  In addition, every scattered, existing non-residential land use became the anchor for a patch of “commercial” zoning. Owners of areas planned and zoned for intensive urban land use came to regard these designations as their "rights." (See the Shape of the Future backgrounder, “The Role of Municipalities in Creating Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns,” December 2002.)

 

There is a second form of over-zoning in the Countryside. In the '70s and '80s, just beyond the Clear Edge, or what would logically comprise the Clear Edge, of the New Urban region, large tracts of land were zoned for “commercial” land uses. The hope was to lure jobs and thus tax base out from the Urbanside. For example, in the late '1990s, Loudoun and Prince William Counties planned and zoned enough land for intensive urban land use to accommodate building 7½ midtown Manhattans -- 1.3-billion square feet of non-residential land uses!

Scattered spots of commercial zoning and the municipal tax base wishing wells are detrimental to the Countryside because they lead to scattered urban land uses.

While natural economic pressures would close out the inefficient scattered sites, the land-use “rights” preserved the option to create urban land uses in the Countryside.

 

In the '70s, some Countryside jurisdictions began to restrict the zoning by increasing lot size and by limiting urban development to “service districts.”  However, there is still perhaps 100X too much land planned and zoned for commercial land uses in the Countryside within 100 miles of New Urban Region cores in the Mid-Atlantic.

 

More Density in the Service Districts?

 

One way to express the Clear Edge is to draw a service-district boundary. However, just putting more density in the Service Districts will not save the Countryside. Just as urban agglomerations inside a Clear Edge must plan to accommodate Balanced Communities, so must communities outside the Clear Edge. As articulated in The Third Way, small urban enclaves within the Countryside also need plans to form Distributed Balanced Communities. 

 

A Balanced Community plan that includes the Countryside and smaller Urbansides (perhaps the Service Districts at a reduced scale) can evolve to be components that make up a Balanced Community. But the governing authorities in the Countryside also must take action to reduce the flux of dots. The rescue of a parcel here and there will not suffice. In fact, "protection" of scattered parcels -- through such devices as conservation easements -- puts  more pressure for urban land uses on the unprotected parcels.

 

Density Inside and Outside the Clear Edge

 

There are very important relationships between changes in intensity, density, character and function of settlement patterns inside the Clear Edge as opposed to those outside the Clear Edge.

 

The density of dots (households) in the Countryside outside the Clear Edge has a very low critical threshold. An influx of urban uses in the Countryside converts the impacted area into low and very low intensity (and thus a dysfunctional) Urbanside where before there was Countryside.  However, inside the Clear Edge, the conditions are fundamentally different.

If achieving a Balanced Community is a guiding principle, the flux of activity can increase by a factor of up to six or eight times inside the Clear Edge surrounding an Urbanside without changing the fundamental character of the urban fabric.

Contemporary society has produced grossly-

underutilized urban space because of the hyper-competitive winner-take-all economic system as noted in the first Special Report. Without a rational allocation of the total cost for land conversion and use to those who benefit directly from it, more short-term profit can be extracted from scattered outlying, single-function projects in what was once Countryside. The market repeatedly and without exception has demonstrated that in the long term, it is multi-functional, urbane space that is most highly valued.    

 

If done intelligently, the economic, social and physical function of the Urbanside is improved by increasing the intensity. Those who, at first blush, might tend to oppose building on vacant or underutilized land close to them often find they like the results. This is not only because their property value goes up. The property value goes up because the enclave becomes a better place to live, work, acquire services and pursue recreation. This reality is hard to get across to some citizens within the current media/advertising created image of the “American Dream,” but, as documented in the first Special Report, it is supported by the market for houses and for places to work, shop, and enjoy leisure activities.

 

The Key is Balance

 

There must be a decrease the number of dots in the Countryside and an increase the number of dots in the Urbanside to achieve a relative balance with the needs of citizens. As a consequence, most "rural" area plans and agriculture-preservation plans that provide scattered units or dooryard-scale urban uses which are not components of Balanced Communities are misleading. 

 

One cannot "preserve," much less "conserve" the Countryside if even a few urban houses are scattered here and there year after year. Hiding a few urban houses in the bushes may serve a short-term aesthetic objective, but over the long term, the Countryside dies from an epidemic of urban uses on small parcels. Under the most favorable circumstances, major portions of the large urban lots are reforested, and the scattered houses are hidden in the trees. However, open vistas disappear,  auto-dominated employment and services expand and farm-to-market roads become clogged during a.m. and p.m. peaks and on weekends.

 

For the good of all citizens, it would be intelligent to support the people taking care of the land in the Countryside and to stop subsidizing those benefiting from scattered urban dwellings there. As luck would have it, if citizens work together to “get the urban development off the backs” of those who take care of land in the Countryside, the public will not need to provide any subsidies. Part of any plan to achieve this must include forcing those who benefit from the scattered urban land uses to pay the full cost of their actions.

 

Regional and Global Context

 

The countryside cannot be conserved and enhanced in a context that does not address the settlement patterns of the entire region. It is also true that within the global economy, it is not possible for a single region to become “balanced” and “sustainable” without regard to its subcontinental and continental trading partners.

 

There is an overarching imperative to create a sustainable society. That requires balance at the global, continental, sub-continental and regional scales. The Countryside cannot be protected or sustained within a context of sub-continental population growth and unsustainable resource consumption.

 

Post-Industrial civilization cannot support exponential growth in population on a continental, subcontinental, nation-state or regional basis. But for ill-advised changes in immigration policy during the '90s, the United States would be similar to Japan, England, Germany and Italy as far as stabilizing its population.

 

Still, significant regional population growth is possible and sustainable because extensive land within the Clear Edge around the urbanized areas, especially in the cores of New Urban Regions, is vacant and underutilized. However, the Countryside already has too many urban land uses and cannot accommodate urban growth outside the Clear Edges around the urban enclaves in the Countryside. Nor can it support new transport or transmission corridors.  There is ample existing capacity if change is focused within the Clear Edges and land use is balanced with transportation capacity.

 

A New Response to Fundamental Change in the Countryside

 

Within the Countryside, the fundamental shift in the nature of human activity has been magnified by an increased number of urban households in the Countryside over the past 50 years. An equally profound response is required in order to reverse the current process. Already the harm to Countryside resources may be irreparable. The pattern of destruction must be reversed now before there is further harm.

“Slow growth” simply means the change happens more slowly so that most citizens do not become alarmed until the damage is done.  The process of subsidizing scatteration of urban land uses across the Countryside must be stopped.

Each year the Countryside is closer to the point of no return. To paraphrase a section of a 2001 report by SYNERGY/Planning, Inc:

All the organizations concerned with conservation of the Northern Piedmont Countryside could, for the next five years, do twice as much every year as they did in 2001, and if that is all that is done, after 20 years, there will be no Countryside left.”

The survey of 23  jurisdictions covering 5.8 million acres indicates that a similar scenario is in store for the entire Mid-Atlantic Countryside.

 

Since 2001, slower economic growth has lowered the demand for homes in some regions. At the same time, fear of terrorism and related security issues has enhanced the demand for urban housing scattered across the Countryside as documented by recent IRS data. When the broader market for new development returns -– either as a peace dividend or due to more war spending -– citizens had best be prepared. We cannot rely on what we have been doing and expect to save the Countryside and build Balanced Communities that make up sustainable New Urban Regions. In other words, “what we have been doing has not worked.”

 

Where to From Here?

 

“Government” alone cannot make the changes necessary to foster the fundamental changes required to stop the scatteration of urban land uses in the Countryside. There must be a concerted effort by a broad coalition of interests. The answer is not "controls." What government controls cannot do, competitive economics can if the playing field is leveled. The answer is to allocate rationally and fairly the true costs of human settlement patterns. That is not easy to do, but it is essential because the window of opportunity is closing.

 

The ultimate goal is the creation of Balanced Communities inside the Clear Edge around the cores of New Urban Regions, and Balanced -- but Disaggregated -- Communities in the Countryside outside these boundaries.  However, that requires intermediate stages because citizens apparently cannot get from here to there.

The next step is to create broad citizen understanding of what is happening on both sides of the Clear Edge. Then there must be a commitment to fundamental change. That is the topic of the third Special Report – Citizen Perspectives that Doom the Urbanside and  the Countryside.

 

-- September 25, 2003