Good land use resisted definition because no physical standard of pure land existed

Evidence

The reformers also stumbled in defining the goal of land-use legislation. In part, the difficulty was unavoidable. The land-use ideal was much harder to define than “clean air” or “clean water.” Scientists could measure pollution with some precision. Even where the air or the water was polluted, people sometimes could remember a time when the skies were blue or the streams were clear. But what was good land use? “There is no physical ideal of ‘pure land’ to guide us or even to indicate when we are making progress,” the authors of The Use of Land acknowledged. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 986

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Conservation is defined by reflective intent behind land use, not by the tools used — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 246