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The Fatal Flaw In Open Space Preservation

Posted by: Chris Steins
Thanks to: transport-policy listserv
28 January 2003 - 2:00pm

How long does land preservation really last? Should a dying man's will forever constrain his property?

"Northen voluntarily gave up the rights to develop the 81-acre parcel. The agency locked those rights away in a contract called a conservation easement. Both sides figured the deal was forever. Maybe not. Northen died in 1986. The Mary Moody Northen Endowment, a nonprofit group she established in her will, owns the land now and wants to sell it for development... The Moody property is worth about $35,000 with the restrictions on it - and about $7 million without them, endowment officials say."

Full Story: Protected property?
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 24, 2003
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It is hard to think of a starker contrast than that between Moses modernism and Jacobs localism. Yet the standoff between Jacobs and Moses only ever sparred two separate wings of the middle class concerning how to build and rebuild the city for people of greater rather than lesser class privilege.
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