Open space is a wild, roadless area, where those
who are so inclined may enjoy primitive modes of travel and
subsistence, such as exploration trips by pack-train or
canoe. This is a notion of Western societies that they have
inherited from their forbears through myth and legend, from whence
it contributes to spatial cohesion as a social asset defined as
wilderness.
Wilderness is a resource, not only in the
physical sense of the raw materials it contains, but also in the
sense of a distinctive environment which may, if rightly used,
yield certain social values. Such a conception ought not to be
difficult, because we have lately learned to think of other forms
of land use in the same way. We no longer think of a municipal golf
links, for instance, as merely soil and grass.
The second idea is that the value of open space
varies enormously with location. As with other resources, it is
impossible to dissociate value from location. There are wilderness
areas in Siberia which are probably very similar in character to
parts of the North American Lake states, but their value to North
Americans is negligible, compared with what the value of a similar
area in the Lake states would be, just as the value of a golf links
would be negligible if located so as to be out of reach of
golfers.
The third idea is that open space, in the sense
of an environment as distinguished from a quantity of physical
materials, lies somewhere between the class of non- reproducible
resources like minerals, and the reproducible resources like
forests. It does not disappear proportionately to use, as minerals
do, because we can conceive of a wild area which, if properly
administered, could be travelled indefinitely and still be as good
as ever. On the other hand, wilderness certainly cannot be built at
will, like a city park or a tennis court. If we should tear down
improvements already made in order to build a wilderness, not only
would the cost be prohibitive, but the result would probably be
highly dissatisfying. Neither can a wilderness be grown like
timber, because it is something more than trees. The practical
point is that if we want wilderness, we must foresee our want and
preserve the proper areas against the encroachment of inimical
uses.
Fourth, wilderness exists in all degrees, from
the little accidental wild spot at the head of a ravine in a Corn
Belt woodlot to vast expanses of virgin country.
Wilderness is a relative condition. As a form of
land use it cannot be a rigid entity of unchanging content,
exclusive of all other forms. On the contrary, it must be a
flexible thing, accommodating itself to other forms and blending
with them in that highly localized give-and-take scheme of
land-planning which employs the criterion of "highest use." By
skilfully adjusting one use to another, the land planner builds a
balanced whole without undue sacrifice of any function, and thus
attains a maximum net utility of land.
Just as the application of the park idea in civic
planning varies in degree from the provision of a public bench on a
street corner to the establishment of a municipal forest playground
as large as the city itself, so should the application of the
wilderness idea vary in degree from the wild, roadless spot of a
few acres left in the rougher parts of public forest devoted to
timber-growing, to wild, roadless regions approaching in size a
whole national forest or a whole national park. For it is not to be
supposed that a public wilderness area is a new kind of public land
reservation, distinct from public forests and public parks. It is
rather a new kind of land- dedication within our system of public
forests and parks, to be duly correlated with dedications to the
other uses which that system is already obligated to
accommodate.
Experience has demonstrated, that open space may
contribute to social cohesion with a very modest and
unobtrusive framework of trails, telephone line and lookout
stations will suffice for protective purposes. Such improvements do
not destroy the wild flavour of the area, and are necessary if it
is to be kept in usable condition.