The Rise of Urban Archipelagoes in the American West: A New Reservation Policy?

During the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, the public lands were managed primarily on behalf of those interested in using and extracting the timber, minerals, and grass. Native Americans were removed from the lands in favor of farmers, grazers, loggers, and miners. During the last half-century, however, the American West has been undergoing a dramatic transformation with significant consequences for our approach to the public lands. Two related trends have emerged. First, the West has experienced a population boom and has seen the development of what demographers call "urban archipelagoes," places like Colorado's Front Range which have densely populated urban, suburban, and exurban areas surrounded by large rural areas with sparse and declining population. Second, this population movement has been accompanied by an increasing preference that the public lands be devoted to preservation and recreation rather than extraction. The article discusses how the law should respond to this new preference. It does so by examining some of the significant similarities between federal Indian policy in the Nineteenth Century and public lands policy today. The article suggests that although those of us who have flocked to the West's urban archipelagoes have a different view of how the West's natural resources are best used, many of us seem to share with our Nineteenth Century counterparts the view that those who were here before we arrived are an obstacle to achieving our desired uses of the West's resources. The article examines the profound Nineteenth Century echoes in the new goal of weaning rural westerners of their dependence on the public lands and training them in the arts of urban service economies so that the lands will be available for recreation and aesthetic enjoyment. The article uses the metaphor to suggest that we more thoughtfully consider the impact of public lands policy on the rural communities of the West and that we exhibit less certainty and more skepticism about the superiority of our public lands aspirations. Skepticism, which implies a willingness to question and explore the viewpoints of others, suggests that participation of rural communities in public lands decision-making is a critical component of a principled public lands policy. The article concludes by discussing several ways of enhancing rural participation and offers a brief critique of the Clinton Administration's adherence to the participation norm.