Smarter Growth. John H. Spiers
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Indeed, most residents had little concern about suburbanization except when their communities were threatened with the loss of open space or with high-density development projects.14
Fairfax made some progress in preserving open space despite conservative political leadership and limited planning tools. In 1950, local officials established a county park authority that administered six regional parks totaling 3,198 acres by 1960. This paled in comparison to the nearly 9,000 acres of parkland in Montgomery, where there was earlier and broader support for pairing open space preservation with compact growth.15
As suburbanization accelerated, residents and county officials contemplated how to protect the natural amenities that made living in the county appealing.16 Local planners offered several proposals: reducing the density of development, lowering property taxes on rural land and open space, and increasing public financing for conservation easements or purchasing land outright for parks.17 But there were numerous barriers at the state level to moving forward with these strategies. Historically, the state courts had narrowly defined how zoning and other tools could be used to regulate private property rights. In addition, the state constitution precluded the use of financial incentives to encourage landowners to preserve land rather than develop it. Although communities in Virginia could use public funds to pay for conservation easements or acquire scenic and historic areas, they had to seek state authorization for each case.18 In sum, the state constrained localities in their ability to manage growth and preserve rural land.
As suburbia consumed more land, residents and officials in mostly white middle- and upper-class communities stepped up their support of open space preservation. By 1969, parkland in Fairfax expanded to 5,000 acres from 3,200 at the beginning of the decade, although Montgomery’s increased to nearly 15,000 from 9,000.19 While local officials, as well as regional park authorities, played an important role in parkland acquisition during the 1960s, federal financing through the Land and Water Conservation Fund was crucial to many local projects. Created by Congress in 1965, the fund included a state assistance program that provided matching grants to help states and local communities protect land for parks, recreation, and nature preserves. Among the three large suburban counties in Greater Washington, Fairfax was the biggest beneficiary of the federal program, receiving $2.85 million between 1966 and 1969, while Montgomery received $463,000 and Prince George’s $260,000.20
The motivations behind land preservation in postwar metropolitan America highlighted a shift from the conservation-oriented values of a production-based economy to the environmental and quality-of-life values of a consumer-based economy. Indeed, the commitment to open space preservation that blossomed in the 1960s was made possible by postwar material abundance and the willingness of officials and their constituents, albeit mostly in white middle- and upper-class communities, to invest in land preservation. The protection of specific sites from suburbanization had deep roots in a search for health and well-being that defined the suburbs as better off than central cities. As suburbanization consumed ecologically sensitive resources like hillsides and wetlands, concerns about pollution and the loss of wildlife grew. With the Burling tract, the stage was set for a dramatic grassroots campaign that argued that certain places were too ecologically sensitive, too rich in natural splendor, and too special to develop.21
A Controversy Forms
The Burling tract was one of the few properties in Greater Washington adjacent to the Potomac River that had not been significantly developed or permanently preserved by 1970. It was named for Edward J. Burling Sr., a midwesterner who moved to Washington, D.C., during World War I and bought 336 acres of hilly and mostly forested land in McLean in the early 1920s. The property, located twelve miles from the White House, was positioned atop 150-foot cliffs looking down on the Potomac rapids to the north and the waterfall of Scott’s Run to the west. It was situated at the northernmost portion of the Scott’s Run watershed, which drains directly into the Potomac, and offered scenic water views, a remarkable collection of wildflowers, forests of ancient hemlocks, and abundant wildlife.22 Burling, who became a prominent Washington lawyer, had a log cabin built overlooking the rapids. But he refused to have electricity installed, preferring to use kerosene lamps and a wood stove rather than allow a utility company to run wiring underground. Despite not having modern utilities, the estate became a gathering spot for political and social elites, artists, and intellectuals.23
In 1967, Burling died, leaving his waterfront property in trust to his family. Shortly thereafter, a fire destroyed the house, leaving only a flagpole, swimming pool, and a fireplace on the site. Less than two years later, his heirs sought to sell the estate because they could not afford the taxes, which amounted to over $30,000. Burling’s son went to Stewart Udall to see if the Department of the Interior would purchase the land and turn it into a park or wildlife preserve. Although Udall was interested and had intervened a few years earlier in the Merrywood case, five miles away, the agency did not have the necessary funds. With the existing tax burden and no offers forthcoming to acquire and preserve the property, the Burling family contracted to sell the property to a local development firm in mid-1969.24
Figure 6. Scott’s Run Nature Preserve, formerly the Burling Tract. Source: Fairfax County Park Authority.
The firm of Miller & Smith proposed building a luxury residential community on the Burling estate, whose southeast corner was conveniently situated at the intersection of two major thoroughfares, the Capital Beltway and Georgetown Pike. The plans included three hundred homes clustered on half-acre lots rather than distributed across the entire tract as was common in many suburbs at the time. This left half of the land undeveloped, including strips along the Potomac waterfront to the north and Scott’s Run to the west. In July 1969, officials in the county land development office offered the first approval for preliminary site plans without a public hearing, which was possible because the plans did not conflict with existing single-family zoning. Nearby residents, however, soon became aware of the developer’s plans.25
In the fall of 1969, Betty Cooke, a local artist who lived across from the Burling tract in a 150-year-old pink house, noticed a small green sign on the property announcing a hearing on the development plan before the county planning commission. On September 18, twenty of her friends and neighbors met at the home of Graydon Upton to review the plans and organize a “citizens committee” to advocate for reducing the proposed density and thereby the impact of the project. The membership drew from that of the Old Georgetown Pike and Potomac River Association and included Sharon Francis, a former aide to beautification advocate Lady Bird Johnson; David Dominick, head of the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration; John Adams, a Washington lawyer for a Richmond firm who was a conservationist and admirer of the Burling tract; and Townsend Hoopes, a former official with the Air Force.26
As middle- and upper-middle-class homeowners living in an affluent community experiencing rampant development, the members of the citizens committee sought to buffer themselves from sprawl while preserving access to the natural amenities that made their communities desirable. Many also had conservation or environmental interests that were piqued by the ecological sensitivity and natural amenities of the Burling tract. Finally, they could draw on their professional knowledge and connections to the community and government to adeptly navigate the political decision-making process that would shape the site’s destiny. Thus this group of citizens was well positioned to influence decision making in the Burling case.27
The citizens’ committee from the Old Georgetown Pike and Potomac River Association moved quickly to raise objections to the environmental impact of Miller & Smith’s development proposal. First it commissioned a siltation and erosion study, which discussed how a large-scale project would degrade the site’s slopes and pollute the Potomac. The county government was attuned to these concerns and had instituted a policy requiring developers to control erosion and sedimentation during the land preparation and construction phases of projects. At the first public hearing for the Burling tract project in late October 1969, members of the citizens committee used their study to criticize the developer’s inadequate conservation safeguards and the lack of much usable parkland. They recommended reducing