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4.0 out of 5 stars
The Ghost of Tom McCall, June 12, 2007
This review is from: New Geographies of the American West: Land Use and the Changing Patterns of Place (Orton Family Foundation Innovation in Place Series) (Hardcover)
In 1971 Oregon's likable curmudgeon Governor, Tom McCall, gained national notoriety when he urged people to vist Oregon -- but to move on with all deliberate speed -- or go back to California.
Prof. William R. Travis is a kinder, gentler McCall. But the Oregon politician and the Colorado geographer have the same basic message. The secret of the West's success in drawing people to its mountains, deserts, rivers, and estuaries is not so much resources as "amenities." But will the West's seductive geography prove its undoing? McCall and Travis, a generation apart, share the fear the West will choke on its demographic success.
The short version of Professor Travis' argument is that he sees sprawl everywhere, and the cure for it is open natural land.
Travis sees the West as a complex of core cities, their suburban sprawl, then the menacing "exurbs," a scattering of resorts, and an enormous "gentrified" range. Travis' is fond of cities, though he shares little of the loathing for the suburbs so common among urban planners. Most of his dislike is for the exurbs, yet the gentrified range gets a pass from him. The resorts, he hopes, will morph into "micropolitan" areas. This neologism might fit places like Flagstaff or Yakima.
Travis' strategy for choking sprawl and exurbia is an amplified version of one-time Albuquerque Mayor David Rusk's regional government approach. But the darkside of this approach, in a region the size of the West, is [more] reliance on the Federal Government, that already owns most of the West anyway.
This is where Travis falls into the trap he so much wants to West to avoid. It is clear from any number of referenda, a drastic but definitive form of "bottom-up planning," that one of the West's major amenities, ranking with mountains, deserts, and open natural space, is the absence of government meddling. The Federal Government, from the Border Patrol to the Bureaus of Land Management and Indian Affairs does not inspire confidence. Travis uses sound logic, but bad politics, in suggesting that the Feds administer already suspect land use planning.
What I think Professor Travis needs is another book that takes on some of the friction development in the West faces. He is, I believe, far too optimistic about the West's water supply [p. 31], and he is almost silent with respect to tribal claims, and to the immigration ("undocumented Americans") issue, including Mexican state-sponsored irridentism. But, he is at Boulder.
Regardless, Professor Travis has a deep appreciation for the complexity of the West, is technically on the cutting edge of Geography, and, I suspect, has a lot more to say. Readers in this field should look forward to his next books.
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