Ban the Bulldozer and Urban Sprawl

I remember how angered I was at age twelve when contractors bulldozed my favorite pastures and woods and filled in the ponds, preparing the land for a large housing development. I personally experienced how urban sprawl resulted in loss of habitat for many animals and I have noted particularly the decrease in reptile and amphibian populations around my childhood home in Topeka. Aldo Leopold raised national awareness of the abusive patterns of land use in his famous book, A Sand County Almanac (1949). He observed that land abuse and the subsequent destruction of natural environs for all forms of life is the result of humans understanding land as a commodity. His famous quote reveals the need for an ecological worldview: “When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”[1]

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[1] Rome catalogues the numerous times government documents on land use policy quote Leopold. Note 41, Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 241-242.