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NEW TOWNS should be more strongly created. One reason: when these longterm, large-scale projects are begun by developers, they know that they will be on the site for years and be easy targets for complaints and lawsuits. Thus developers tend to plan better and build better. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development should help to finance—not simply guarantee loans covering—the high early costs (planning, road and sewer building) of new towns whose builders pledge to include substantial amounts of housing for the poor. HUD should also streamline bureaucratic procedures now ensnarling existing programs. For their part, local governments should help to hold down soaring land prices in regions that are becoming urbanized so that big parcels of land there can be acquired without producing windfalls for speculators. This might be done by levying heavy taxes on speculative profits, as in Vermont.
TOP FARM LANDS should be preserved, perhaps by putting them into "agricultural preserves." In such areas, the farmers' property taxes are reduced—if the owners pledge not to sell out to developers for a specified period of time.
ZONING RULES should be updated and upgraded in almost every community. Instead of arbitrarily dividing up a township, local governments should analyze their growth rates and coordinate them with future capital-spending programs. In addition, they should forbid the development of flood plains and other environmentally fragile—or dangerous—areas.
These can properly be reserved, however, for parks, golf courses and other recreational uses. After doing this, the towns should draw their zones to guide development selectively—not exclude it.
OPEN SPACE must be set aside and, wherever possible, made available for public use and enjoyment. Some areas are of particular value: coastal dunes that protect the shore front, forests that reduce floods, wetlands that start biological food chains. In addition to outright purchase or donation, there are many ways to preserve these areas. Towns can tax themselves to buy "greenbelts," or they can buy "easements"—the rights to keep property from being developed without actually buying the property itself.
CLUSTER PLANNING should become the rule rather than the exception. Instead of taking a parcel of land and carving it into the greatest number of lots, developers should cluster their houses together to prevent sprawl and preserve open space. In return, they avoid the expense of building long roads and sewer lines through their projects.
Such measures are far from unrealistic. Citizens seem ready to accept the legal, financial and social consequences of more planning in exchange for less haphazard, wasteful growth. Given that new mood, there is a strong chance that more and more land will be wisely used.