New Geographies of the American West

Land Use and Changing P{atterns of Place

Bill Travis

In this new publication from Island Press, Bill Travis examines development patterns in the West, arguing that the region is dominated much more by booming development than by bust. In the process he takes readers along on a tour of the driving, shaping and enabling forces that createthe landscapes we see around us. He then surveys the main land use patterns, starting with the cities and their suburbs, and then shifting his focus out across larger metropolitan regions, and their new exurban fringes, where low-density development increasingly mixes it up with wildlife and wildfire. The book then visits the West's resort geographies, exploring the social and landscape effects of resort growth. Finally it wanders the West's rangelands, finding an uncomfortable mix of gentrified and working ranches. In the concluding chapters, Travis takes on the challenges of land use planning in a region marked by anti regulation and pro property rights attitudes, asking whether we can, with emerging new tools and strategies, put the West on a development path that nurtures healthy communities as well as the charismatic and inspiring landscapes in which they are embedded.

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