The Meanings and Uses of Land

What Is Land?

From the Old Testament to today, the subject of land arouses emotions: a vision of hope and faith, a source of wealth and social status, a subject of indignant political reform, and so on. It is therefore appropriate at the outset of a book on land use and society to ask, what really is "land"?

Land is one of the key constituents of life on Earth, along with water, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and sunlight. Lacking any of these components would make it unnecessary and in fact impossible for life to exist as we know it. Daniel Hillel (1994, 20) observes that since three-quarters of our planet is covered by oceans, it should be called "Water" rather than "Earth." True, but those who did the naming happened to stand on dry land (terra firma). Water, especially freshwater, is indispensable to the use of land and therefore to terrestrial life. Yet without land capable of benefiting from the application of water, either through natural precipitation or irrigation, life on the planet would be all wet, so to speak.

Unlike water, land cannot be summarized by a convenient chemical formula like H2O. In fact, it is not easily summarized at all; it is many things simultaneously. First, land is the physical material of Earth's crust that supports all life. In this sense, "land" includes soils, vegetation, minerals, groundwater and surface water, oil and gas, sand and gravel, diamonds, coal, gold, silver, lead, and uranium. The concept of land as physical material was reflected in the medieval English practice of representing change of land ownership by a clod of earth handed by the seller to the buyer (known quaintly as livery of seisin). Nowadays, legal documents perform that role. (See Chapter 7.)

Land in the physical sense also includes the produce of the soil. The "pomegranates, oil olive, and honey" were part of the biblical Promised Land. Both natural and cultivated plants physically define the landscape and thus the nature of land, as do, for instance, the giant sequoia of the California coast, the spruce-fir forest of coastal Maine, the yellow pine of Texas and the Southeast, the corn and soybeans of the Midwest, the wheat of the Great Plains, and the grassy sand dunes of coastal shorelines. Vegetation native to or grown on land is part of the land, perceptually, functionally, and often legally. Wildlife, however, is not considered part of "the land," although domesticated livestock raised on land is subject to ownership independently of the land on which it grazes.

Second, land in Anglo-America is legally referred to as real property or real estate. For purposes of ownership and use, land is divided into units known as parcels. Each parcel represents a defined area of land surface set off by boundaries and owned by a particular individual, group, corporation, or government agency. In the rural context, parcels may extend to hundreds or thousands of acres. In urban areas, parcels typically range from a few acres to small fractions of an acre. (One acre equals 43,650 square feet, approximately a square of 200 feet on each side.) Parcels of "land" also extend upward and downward from the land surface (grade level). Portions of the volume above or below the surface may be enclosed with structures that become part of the real property in a legal sense. The conversion of land from essentially resource-based uses, such as agriculture, forestry, or outdoor recreation, to space-enclosing uses, such as homes, offices, shopping centers, and parking garages, is a critical and essentially irreversible step in the process of urbanization. (See Figure 7-1 and further discussion of these concepts in Chapter 7.)

The third concept of land is as an object of capital value capable of being owned and used by its owner to maximize economic return. Land in this sense is a "bundle of rights and obligations" that are defined (often vaguely) and protected (sometimes uncertainly) by the legal system of the country or society in which the land is located. In its most abstract form, land is purely an investment to be bought and sold like government bonds, corn futures, or pork bellies. Billions of dollars are spent on land or structures attached to it with the investors never visiting the site, never getting their shoes muddy, never watching the sunset from its highest point, or never forming any personal attachment to the land whatsoever. In the 1990s, a financial instrument known as a real estate investment trust (REIT) allowed tens of thousands of investors to participate in the building of anonymous shopping malls, office parks, and housing developments, without the slightest idea of how or where their money was changing the landscape of America.

Nearly 60 percent of land in the United States is in private ownership (Figure 1-1). About one-third of the nation's land is held by the federal government under various agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the National Park Service (NPS) (Figure 1-2). States and local governments hold about 6 percent and Indian tribes about 2 percent of the nation's land. Even on public...