Page:The law of city planning and zoning (IA lawofcityplannin00williala).pdf/15

Rh On reading this list it will be observed that the books included are all economic in character and that they all relate to the land. The two works on Agricultural Economics deal with the economic aspects of agriculture and are thus distinguished from books on technical agriculture. The same holds true with regard to the book on the Economics of Forest Land. The unity is found in the idea of property in land.

It is hoped that the present work will very greatly broaden out the interest in the subjects which fall within our field. Students of the economics of land problems have too generally failed to appreciate the fact that land planning, both urban and agricultural, is absolutely essential to their solution. On the other hand, city planners have too generally failed to appreciate that fundamentally their work must be based upon economics. Land Economics, then, as a concept opens up a large practical and scientific field.

There is a great need for investigation in Land Economics. We are face to face with the gravest economic problems arising out of landed property—problems that lie at the very foundation of our economic life; and when we turn to economic treatises we find little to help us in their solution.

Thoughtful men if affairs must realize the significance of landed property and all the arrangements that are connected with it as soon as these facts are called seriously to their attention. Some of them already show an appreciation of what land questions mean for the future of civilization. Especially significant is the following quotation from the late James J. Hill, whose greatness and experience in developing a vast inland empire entitle his words to careful consideration: "Land with population is a wilderness and population without land is a mob. The United States has many social, political, and economic questions—some old, some new—to settle in the near future; but none so fundamental as the true relation of the land to the national life."

This relationship of the land to the national life is a question of property when we reach its heart, and all investigations of land problems which do not find their center in the institution of property must be superficial and unsatisfactory, leading to no permanent solutions.