Once in private ownership, land can be readily used or sold as a valued commodity. A factor of use or sale is, of course, the ability to define and
All of North America was occupied, after a fashion, by Indians, whose home it was and who obtained their living from the land.
The Indian concept of landownership was completely different from that of the whites.
The Indian regarded land as something to be used and enjoyed, even to be defended against trespassers, but not to be owned exclusively by one person, nor never to be bought and sold in the commercial sense.
When the white man sought to buy land from Indians, the latter might agree and accept a purchase price or gift, yet not
understand what the white man meant. It was not simply that the white men drove sharp bargains or the Indians reneged on bargains accepted, though there was some of each; more importantly, there was never a genuine meeting of minds. . . .
Marion Clawson
38 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE The United States owned a great deal of land, public and private capital was in short supply, and the need for public improvement was great; why not make public land available to finance the construction of needed public improvements? This was a sound basic idea, which accomplished a great deal of good. . . .
Marion Clawson
The topsoil mantle is teeming with life.
Scoop up a handful almost anywhere, and you are holding a cosmos of microscopic organisms and cells of regeneration.
prove rights of ownership by clear title to the property. Such proof pre-supposes a survey and the establishment on the ground of stakes, mon-uments, or other markings by which the property boundaries can be identified. Further, there must be a means by which a lot or parcel may be so described as to differentiate it from and relate it to all other land-holdings. Finally, there is need for a systematic and orderly means of recording land descriptions and titles.
In the United States, by comparison, we are fortunate in our system. In many Latin American countries, for instance, few of these conditions pertain. There, accurate surveys seldom exist; rights in land are often clouded and in dispute, and the systematic recording of titles is not yet a fact of life. Much land has been preempted by squatters, now backed by traditional sentiment in favor of the pioneer and against those who own or believe they own superseding rights to the land. Such vague and chaotic conditions of property ownership lead to a lack of commitment, investment, and improvement by those not certain of established rights and give force to a growing movement toward massive land reform.
Surveying
The original land survey has left an indelible mark upon those parts of the United States to which it was applied. There was much to com-mend the system. As Marion Clawson has noted, we are a rectilinear country, divided into squares and oblongs like a haphazard checker-board, with the lines running directly north-south and east-west.
Roads typically follow the surveyed section lines even though this means going up and down hills instead of around them. Farmers tend to lay out their fields parallel to the boundaries of their land even though this may mean cultivating up and down the slope rather than along the contours.
Almost imperceptibly the relationship of society to the land has changed, to a point at which the public good now largely transcends the rights of the individual.
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Diagrammatic system of land surveying.
Much erosion has been caused or accelerated in this way. Some land experts, observing these types of bad land use, have been highly critical of the rectilinear land survey and argue for modification.
Perhaps the time has now come. The crude magnetic surveying instru-ments and need for range lines cleared through forest and swamps made the mechanical grid quite reasonable in its time. But now, with the advent of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), photogrammetry, laser sighting, computer techniques, coordinates, and electronic traverse computation, it is time for a whole fresh look at the process of land description and measurement. A gradual land resurvey to follow and respond to natural topographical conformation is clearly in order. Gov-ernmental regulation could now require that future land surveys and dispositions be based, as appropriate, on more logical parcel boundaries to meet sound land use criteria.
Use
We Americans, with a seemingly inexhaustible land reserve, have been extremely wasteful. We have claimed, cleared, and too often exploited, then moved on, to do it all over again. It is only now, with open land at a premium, that we have begun to understand the need for husbandry.
There are many examples of land well used—among them, New En-gland villages fitted to the topography, the Amish farmsteads of Pennsyl-vania, Florida citrus groves, Wisconsin dairy farms, wheat and corn fields of the prairies, ranch lands of the plains, and bean fields, vine-yards, and orchards along the west coast—and across the breadth of the land, well-tended homesites and gardens.
In the good examples, we may perceive these simple precepts of sound land management:
Learn to read the landscape,
to comprehend the grandeur of its geologic framework, to understand the vital workings and interdependence of the
land and water systems,
to discern in each form and feature the unique expression of nature’s creative process.
Let the land’s nature determine its use. And so address each measure of the landscape as to evoke, through our planning, use, and treatment, its highest qualities and potential.
When land passes from one ownership to another, certain legal rights are transferred with the property. Unless otherwise specified in the deed or governing regulations, these include the right to use, cultivate, mine, perform earthwork, remove the soil or vegetation from the land, or build upon it.
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. . . .
That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.
Aldo Leopold
40 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
With photogrammetry even freely meandering lines can be plotted for property description and recording—with a trace of the line and coordi-nates on an aerial map for the record.
Only when all or part of the boundary line needs be staked or monumented is a field crew needed.
The carrying capacity of land-water area is the population or level of activity that can be sustained for a given length of time without depletion of the resources or breakdown of the biological (natural) systems.
Targets over random field stakes can be plotted by coordinates from an aerial photo grid.
Meandering property lines are easily established.
Running with the land are also certain responsibilities, many firmly established by our land law tradition. It is unlawful, for instance, to cause damage by directing an increased flow of storm-water runoff onto a neighbor’s property. It is not lawful to alter grades significantly along a property line, or to create off-site earth slippage, erosion, or siltation, or to generate undue air, water, noise, or visual pollution. Other more recent restrictions dealing with such matters as wetland protection, beach access, erosion control, and unregulated grading are still to be fully tested in the courts.
Since most sites were acquired in the first place because they were attrac-tive or had other posiattrac-tive qualities, it might well be proposed as a gen-eral rule that the less modification, the better. A fundamental principle of landscape design is to “plan to the site,” letting the natural contours, conditions, and covers dictate the building and landscape forms.
Where for one reason or another it may be desirable to alter the grades, as to provide required use areas or to dispose of excavated materials, the topsoil on disturbed areas should first be stripped and stockpiled. The revised contours will then be reshaped to accommodate the proposed uses, to express the meld of natural and constructed elements, and to enhance the building-site composition.
Landowners have the responsibility to use their property so as to protect its natural values and cause no harm to neighbors.
Land 41
Plan to the land.
SWA Group