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Well, I don't know.

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The countryside I hope remains the same, but I don't think it will.

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I think the city is going out to the countryside.

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I feel that it's just going to keep going out further and further until there won't

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be any countryside left.

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Obviously, increasingly it's going to become urbanized and it's getting even harder and

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harder to do for that has open spaces.

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You have to drive further and further.

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The tract homes are just eating up all the countryside.

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The business comes first apparently.

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I should like to see around Chicago such a thing as has happened in London where they've

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set the five mile green belt around London, which is all farms today.

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Couldn't very well tell you what would happen.

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America is a very big country.

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What difference does it make really if a few corn fields become subdivisions?

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Land close to big cities is too valuable to be occupied by cows and crops.

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At least that seems to be our attitude.

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The farmers can always move farther out and when their land value skyrockets, farmers

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are usually ready to sell out and move on to greener pastures.

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A good example is California, which once had eight million acres of arable farmland.

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Two million of those acres have been urbanized.

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If present trends continue, another 750,000 will be urbanized by 1980.

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Farmland thus developed is virtually gone.

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Who could afford to tear up a city to plant corn on the site?

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Many people say that's no problem.

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We won't need the land anyway.

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Since 1948, we have cut in half the land being farmed.

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We now produce the same amount of crops on half the land.

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There are many indications, however, that the pesticides and inorganic nitrogen and

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phosphorus fertilizers, which account for this productivity, are a dead end street.

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The agronomists will tell us that yes indeed we're putting back as much nitrogen fertilizer

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as we take out in the form of crop.

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But then if you look for the rest of the removal of nitrogen from the soil, you find that it's

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not only leaving in the crop, but is also leaching out into surface waters where in

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fact it contributes to the pollution of these waters.

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And that's an example of the fact that we aren't really in natural balance.

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We talked a lot about this product called Treflant.

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It hasn't been on the market in very many years.

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From Barry Cominer's point of view, the chemical farming methods we have developed are ecologically

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unsound and will have to be abandoned sooner or later.

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We may desperately need the farmland we are losing to urbanization.

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The landscape is an intricate fabric of plant life and animal life.

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Traditionally, our development has torn this fabric apart, and once it is gone, it is usually

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gone for good.

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If present trends continue, by the year 2000 we will have doubled our man-made environment.

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We will build another New York, another Los Angeles, another Chicago.

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Chicago, for example, will grow outward, as will Indianapolis, Gary, Milwaukee, forming

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one giant, metropolitan region around Lake Michigan.

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Will we make the same mistakes?

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Will we destroy the ecological systems that lie on our path?

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Intrinsic values such as the wetland patterns, water patterns, or we call this a marsh here

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in Wisconsin.

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In southern Illinois we call it a swamp.

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It's a pattern in the land that I think most people do appreciate.

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It's a pattern that we would like to protect as a form determinant to guide the urban fabric of tomorrow.

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Now these wetlands are very important.

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They're the basic habitat of many of our birds and wildlife.

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It also serves as an aquifer recharge area that permits our surface waters to penetrate

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down into our underground storage systems so that we will have a future water supply

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for the cities tomorrow.

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Water gets into the underground storage system by seeping into the ground until it reaches

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an impermeable layer in the earth's crust which it cannot penetrate.

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Then, groundwater behaves like water in a glass being filled, rising as long as there

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is supply from above to fill it.

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This underground system is called the aquifer, which means water bearer.

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Water to recharge the aquifer may be rainwater, or it may be water that seeps down from lowlands

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or swamps, which funnel it into the underground storage system.

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Filling in, bathing over, and urbanizing lowlands thus reduces the available water supply.

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It's very unique to find these types of systems right in the heart of the city, and this happens

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to be right in the heart of the capital city here in Madison.

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Earlier inhabitants had the foresight to protect it and enhance it.

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And what we'd like to do on the fringe areas of most cities that are going to double in size

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in the next 20 years, what we'd like to do is to protect these important systems and

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use these patterns to guide the patterns of man.

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Tired of fighting rush hour traffic, tired of soaring urban crime rates,

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tired of integrated schools, then why not investigate the beauty, splendor, and gracious

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living waiting for you now in surprising Grand Canyon Estates.

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Yes, Grand Canyon Estates, located in the booming southwest and soon to be the site of the deepest

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artificial lake in the entire world.

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That's right, the developers of Grand Canyon Estates are transforming what was once a useless

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hole in the ground into the most unique community you'll ever be fortunate enough to

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invest in.

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Beside the Leacher Time Fund spent on the waters of Grand Canyon Lake, you'll also enjoy the

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miraculous 20,000 acre Jungle in a Desert, the largest collection of plastic vegetation ever

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assembled in one place.

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And that's not all.

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Imagine if you can, sitting on the patio of your new home and gazing on one of the most beautiful

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ships ever built, the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga, purchased from the Navy and transported

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intact to Grand Canyon Estates.

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There it will rest beside the original Brooklyn Bridge, soon to be reconstructed over Grand

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Canyon Lake.

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So, if you're interested in a truly unique land investment, why not build your new home

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in surprising Grand Canyon Estates?

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To identify the values that exist in the land, landscape architects like Phil Lewis analyze

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the various patterns that compose it.

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Wetlands, marshes, rivers, lakes and adjacent land are one such pattern.

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Prime farmland is another.

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Steep land and forests are two more.

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These four systems, they believe, are among those features that should not be disrupted,

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corrupted or urbanized.

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To do so is to damage our life support system, the intricate fabric that supplies to us water,

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food, oxygen and other amenities.

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Here we see a little bit of rolling topography and steep topography for the middle west at

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least.

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And where we have steep topography, we normally have vegetation because man has found it difficult

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to build here or found it difficult to farm.

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Many of us in the field of landscape architecture would like to see these natural systems of

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steep topography protected and enhanced and used again as farm determinants.

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Washington, D.C., like other big cities, continues to explode outward.

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In this map, black represents the existing city.

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The grid area fills in projected growth over the next 25 years.

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If present trends continue, the urban blanket will be drawn indiscriminately across the

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landscape, house by house, shopping center by shopping center.

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The basic values of the land thus overrun will be lost.

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The process Phil Lewis urges is to exclude essential value patterns from urbanization,

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subtracting the wetland pattern, farmland, steep slopes and other features from the landscape.

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Subtracting these leaves a residual open pattern, the grid area, where building can take place

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in harmony with natural systems.

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For big cities like Washington, D.C., however, many urban experts urge a more drastic measure,

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a green belt, to encircle a city and inhibit further growth.

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They think our biggest cities are already much too big.

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A city must be surrounded by a green belt in order to keep sufficiently contained,

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in order to have the open spaces and nature sufficiently accessible.

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You shouldn't have to spend an hour in a car in order to find nature.

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I've often thought that really space, three-dimensional space, is the most neglected resource that we have.

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Now here we are going up through a narrow corridor, where you have these narrow restricted walls,

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and then we get into these glorious open rooms that could be almost like the Plaza of Venice,

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where space opens up again.

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It offers a natural foil in the urban landscape that provides change in variety from the urban streets

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to this natural scene.

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Cities are not the only source of impact on the natural world.

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Another major impact is the highway, particularly big interstates.

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Typically, highways are constructed at the shortest distance between two points,

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with an effort to minimize the dollar cost.

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But dollars are not the only cost.

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There is also the cost of what is lost in the landscape.

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Landscape planning and design is moving quite rapidly with new technology.

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Up to the present, we've depended upon maps where we can plot the outstanding natural systems.

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But today we can now turn to the computer that can store and print out a map in three seconds

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of thousands of bits of information about the landscape.

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Here we were utilizing these thousands of bits of information to align I-57,

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a new ribbon of concrete, laying out a highway that would make the least impact on these many natural systems.

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Here we see the many different alignments arrived at by the computer.

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Each alignment represents a different policy.

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For instance, the green alignment is over here through the ecological system.

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This is the farmer's alignment.

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The farmer would like to see the highway off of the Class A farmlands.

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The other hand, the alignment of lease cost is the shortest distance

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and shares a common right-of-way corridor with an existing highway.

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The interesting thing about this study is that for the first time in history

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we have stored literally millions of bits of information about this total landscape.

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And for the first time we've been able to tell the public of Wisconsin

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that it's just not the cost of the concrete to build a highway,

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but for the first time we're able to demonstrate all of the thousands of different value patterns

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that have to be traded off for this highway system.

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We think it's a very constructive tool in guiding impact of any kind in the future more in harmony with these systems.

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Music

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Music

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Space technology offers yet another new tool for environmental management.

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Sound of rocket launch

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In July 1972, the United States launched a new breed of satellite called ERTS,

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Earth Resources Technical Satellite.

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It will photograph every part of the planet and update those photographs every 18 days.

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Information from ERTS will tell us precisely what is happening to the Earth.

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Infrared photographs, for example, can pick out a single sick tree in a forest.

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Infrared is sensitive to heat differences.

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Disease trees have a different temperature from healthy ones.

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Infrared can also pinpoint and trace certain types of pollution.

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Another device is the multispectral scanner, which analyzes reflected light

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and can pick out one kind of agitation from another by the wavelengths of the light reflected.

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Information like this, analyzed and stored in computers,

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will give us a living memory of the state of the landscape and the world's resources.

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We will know accurately the effect human interventions will have on the natural world.

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Will we use this information wisely to guide the course of future development?

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From the camera's eye in space, the land is one fabric.

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From a man's point of view on Earth, the land is a jumble of private ownership and governmental jurisdictions.

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Total land use planning would step on a lot of toes.

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Yet, men like Phil Lewis think that the Earth's natural resources are not enough.

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We think that this shift in our way of doing business is going to be necessary.

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From the top of the hill here, we can also see the urban pattern beginning to encroach upon these natural systems.

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I think this indicates some of the major problems that we face in America.

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We've been so concerned about growth and GNP that we haven't really been considering

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how to fit this growth that we will have more in harmony with the system.

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Now this truly requires total land use planning in this country.

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Total land use planning would mean zoning all land, both rural and urban, to preserve its inherent values.

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Farmland, for example, would be zoned for that purpose.

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Such an approach would be a complete departure from current land use controls,

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which have changed little since they were drafted in the U.S. Department of Commerce under Secretary Herbert Hoover in 1923.

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These laws treat land as a commodity and view the highest and best use as whatever brings top dollar.

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Today we need new laws that recognize the land as a limited natural resource.

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Land use is a fundamental thing.

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The fact that we've ignored it, that we've treated the land as though it could be appropriated intelligently by private individuals

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seeking only their individual gain, their individual opportunities, is a betrayal of public trust.

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Land and all its resources really belongs to the people of the United States.

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The simplest strategy of all is to buy it up at the earliest possible moment as a reserve of land,

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some of it to be permanently in reserve if it is necessary for agricultural or recreational uses,

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some of it in time to be wisely planned for the sake of building new communities.

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Both things are necessary and there's no difficulty about it.

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If our government doesn't step in and do this, the great corporations with their enormous surpluses of capital

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will step in and do it instead for their own private purposes, as is already happening in many parts of the country.

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And now, a WOMP-TV editorial.

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For some time now, land speculation practices have been raging through our community like fire through a dry forest.

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We think it's about time that someone put it out.

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After all, Mr. Speculator, we're not going to let you down.

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Enough is enough.

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This has been a WOMP-TV editorial.

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And now, WOMP-TV presents a reply to a recent editorial.

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Speaking in rebuttal, Mr. Clyde Scourge, attorney for the United Speculators of America.

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Mr. Scourge.

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Many people wonder why land purchased at $200 an acre should be resold to the public for $25,000 an acre.

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Well, I wonder if these same people realize just how much it costs to prepare a site for residential or industrial use.

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Take, for example, our newest development, Babylon Gardens.

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Why, when we purchased this land, it was worthless!

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Cluttered with trees, marked with small and slightly hills, plagued with wild animals and insect life.

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Why, before we could sell this land to the public in good conscience, we were forced to go to great expense to approve it.

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So the next time somebody complains about the cost of land, you tell them that that flat, paved land they see wasn't put there by nature.

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Somebody had to pay for it.

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This has been a reply to a recent WOMP-TV editorial.

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So what most of us in the fields of environmental planning and design are encouraging is a second look at our value systems in this country.

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If we continue to allow this population to grow as we are, those additional feet that make the impact upon these natural systems destroy them for future generations.

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Some growth seems to be inevitable.

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Even if our birthrate were to recede to a two-child family now, theoretically a replacement birthrate,

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the United States population would not level out until the year 2037, when our population would reach 266 million.

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This is because there are now more children than adults, children who have not yet reached childbearing age.

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Since at least an additional 60 million Americans seem to be on the way, it seems wise to plan for them in a way compatible with the natural systems that support us.

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That means much more stringent land use planning.

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Beyond that is the question of growth altogether.

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Dr. Dennis Meadows, who directed the controversial computer study called Limits to Growth, believes that we must begin now to move toward global equilibrium.

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We see that there is no conceptual possibility of current growth trends in population and in the consumption of virgin resources being continued for another 100 or 150 years.

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Population, as you know, doubles now every 32 years.

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The rate of doubling is increasing.

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We double the amount of natural resources which we consume every 20 years.

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We double the amount of electricity which we consume in the United States every 10 years.

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One has only to extend those doublings out five or ten more times to reach numbers which are absolutely inconsistent with our current system.

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So in one way or another, population growth and the material consumption are going to come to a stop.

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The question is not whether they will stop, for they certainly will,

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but whether they stop because we as a society recognize our limits and begin to move towards an orderly accommodation with those limits,

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or whether we simply ignore them and wait until natural forces, starvation, the depletion of resources, or some other factor, forces to stop.

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In the latter case, we'll probably find ourselves in a situation which is not very desirable.

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While the population of the United States is not large compared to the rest of the world, our environmental impact is extraordinary.

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At present rates, an average American baby born today will require, among other things, 26 million gallons of water,

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52 tons of iron and steel, 1200 barrels of petroleum, 13,000 pounds of paper, and 50 tons of food.

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Only 6% of the world's people, Americans consume each year nearly 50% of the world's consumed resources.

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In terms of resources, U.S. population is the most critical of all.

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The earth we live on is finite. Land is limited. So are virgin resources.

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We have reached a watershed point in history. We can see the dark at the end of the tunnel.

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We can see that our numbers and the impacts of our technologies can conceivably swamp the capacity of the earth to support us.

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On a lesser scale, our traditional ways of doing business daily eat away at the natural systems that support us.

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Perhaps it is time to reconsider.