Entrenched property-ownership ideals defeated the effort to treat land as a social resource

Evidence

The legislation lacked a wide and deep following. Though the nation’s councils of government passed countless laws to reduce the environmental costs of development, environmentalists had not uprooted long-established ideas about the rights of property ownership. “Landowners expect to be able to develop their property as they choose,” William Reilly argued in 1973, “even at the expense of scenic, ecological, and cultural assets treasured by the public.” To a great extent, that remains true. Few property owners believe that a land-use ethic should be a publicly enforced responsibility rather than a matter of private choice. The legal and political battles over the “taking” of property, already years old when Reilly wrote, still rage. Even among those willing to accept regulation as a fact of life, few accept the argument that land is first and foremost a social resource. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 1077

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off the earlier chapters showing the property-rights movement predates Reagan and grew from suburban land-use fights; frames the enduring takings battle central to LGST. — connects to: Frontier abundance mentally licensed wasteful land use until suburbia exhausted it — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 963; Land stewardship fails for lack of pride or shame in husbanding wild things — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 558; Ecological reasoning led courts to deny landowners absolute rights over land — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 319 (+15 more)