Conflicted American Landscapes

February 15, 2021
A well-argued account of how different constituencies view landscapes differently, making agreement on their conservation and use nearly impossible. Nye, a senior research fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute, begins by rightly pointing out that U.S. lands "are riven with conflicts over science, religion, identity, and politics." These conflicts are seldom more evident than when it comes to deciding how to use land in a mosaic of existing landscapes. The U.S. has more unmodified places than many developed countries, but for every Yosemite, notes the author, there are countless sites used foremost for human purposes. Vast swaths of the West are government reserves, much given over to military use: One bombing range in New Mexico is "almost twice as extensive as the Grand Canyon." Though it's surrounded by both agricultural land and wilderness, considering such a place requires one vision or another of Nye's "six conceptions of nature...wilderness, pastoral, utilitarian, fundamentalist Christian, Native American, sacrifice zones." For the most part, writes the author, the American pattern has been relentlessly utilitarian, with progress, and the attendant destruction wrought by it, a seeming cultural norm. Many of Nye's case studies, such as the Grand Canyon and the Nevada nuclear testing grounds, are located in the West, but he also considers such artifacts as skyscrapers, an important element in so many cityscapes, and eastern river systems such as the River Rouge, once a wetland bordered by forest that afforded Native people multiple uses such as fishing, hunting, and farming but that now has been dredged and channelized so that large vessels could reach industrial Detroit. Even now, Nye notes, "most land is still considered raw material to be sold as real estate that owners may transform as they wish in pursuit of profit, pleasure, or personal whim," even as the results of misuse are ever more apparent. Of interest to wilderness advocates, planners, and students of landscape geography.

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