approach – selecting areas for conservation and farming first, subdividing the
remainder last – where much of the rural landscape is conserved or set aside for
agriculture permanently. This approach does not involve any land taking. When
and where professional initiative and political commitment is against growth
management practice, a case-by-case pursuit of conservation subdivision is a
useful alternative practice.^28 Arendt’s advocacy involves trading in the broad-
acre as-of-right zoning for compact clusterings, often for an increased number of
dwellings, all sited within an appropriate sub-part of larger rural estates. These
clusters might be locally of suburban density, yet usually notconnected to water
supply and sewage disposal utilities. These arrangements, like so much else that
is well contrived, become exclusionary by price, a matter researched by Nancy
and James Duncan (‘Deep Suburban Irony’, 1997) for Westchester County near
New York.^29
Planners in the Anglo settler societies have been stuck with precedent and con-
strained by utility providers against planning and implementing the likes of
sustainable design and higher-density outcomes, sequested energy reductions,
conjoint water supply and waste-water management and ‘softer’ materials instal-
lation. The challenge is for a conservator commitment, developer participation,
and political will – backed by community awareness and endorsement of sus-
tainability as a lifestyle exemplar.Along with the negative economic effects of quasi-rural ‘urbanism’ upon agricul-
tural production is an aesthetic despoiling of the countryside; the main lesson
from experience being that rural-urban ‘broad-acre’ arrangements trend progres-
sively toward higher-density quasi-urbanization on an ‘as of right’ presumption.
Thus 20-acre (8 ha) blocks (which I am inclined to favour as sufficiently large to
allay most agro-economic and aesthetic objections) get subdivided down to 10-
acre (4 ha), then 5-acre (2 ha) and sometimes two-acre (0.8 ha) and one-acre (0.4 ha)
blocks.^30 The consequence is that local government authorities are progressively
cornered into permitting ‘normal’ residential infill, withal losing the opportunity
to meet community space needs. The end result is sporadic urbanization, physi-
cally adrift from utilities and community services. Then, an ultimate irony, the
hapless authorities who approved this pattern on a laissez-fairebasis are asked to
subsidize the installation of those utilities and provide social services and com-
munity facilities. In effect the territorial agencies end up paying much of the cost
for installing the very suburban trappings the initiating lifestylers set out to be
independent from!
Within the ex-urban band or corridors outside large towns and cities there are
usually some small ‘historic’ settlements. The edge of such small towns are
randomly configured because the shape of the towns are influenced more by the
pattern of landownership than the defining topographical limits, water excepted.
Ensuring that urban expansion at the fringe of small towns does not leapfrog
beyond an Urban Reserve Area set by a growth boundary, is clearly sound policy,
mainly to avoid the irrational extension of already capitalized utility services. It
is important that urban expansion takes place as part of a defined and designated
patterning, and that rural activities (along with appropriate recreational-rural216 Practice