Schedule

January 22	Introduction
January 29	The frontier and its meaning
Robert Lang, Deborah Popper and Frank Popper, "'Progress of the Nation': The Settlement History of the Enduring American Frontier," Western Historical Quarterly, Autumn 1995 Deborah Popper and Frank Popper, "The New Significance of the Frontier in American History," draft
February 5	The public lands
Frank Popper, "The Timely End of the Sagebrush Rebellion," The Public Interest, Summer 1984 Frank Popper, "What Should Be Done About the Public Lands?" American Land Forum, Summer 1985
February 12	The urban West
Carl Abbott, The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the American West (University of Arizona Press, 1993), pp. 123-197, 205-209 Robert Lang, "Open Spaces, Bounded Places: Do Western Cities Really Sprawl?" Journal of the American Planning Association, forthcoming
February 19	The Great Transformation
Timothy Duane, Shaping the Sierra: Nature, Culture and Conflict in the Changing West (University of California Press, 1998), pp. 173-194 PLUS FOOTNOTES? Thomas Michael Power, Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies: The Search for a Value of Place (Island Press, 1996), pp. 235-254, 279-280
February 26	Ecological restoration
Frank Popper and Deborah Popper, "Great Plains: Checkered Past, Hopeful Future," Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, Winter 1994 Deborah Popper and Frank Popper, "The Buffalo Commons: Metaphor as Method," Geographical Review, October 1999 2-page descriptions of papers due
March 5	No class; individual meetings on paper descriptions in instructor's office
March 12	No class; spring vacation
March 19	Paper presentations
March 26	Paper presentations
April 2	Paper presentations
April 9	Paper presentations First drafts of papers due
April 16	No class; individual meetings on first drafts in instructor's office First drafts of papers due
April 23	To be announced
April 30	Sumup meeting
May 3	Second drafts of papers due in instructor's office by noon

A note about research sources on Western environmental planning

     It is not hard to research Western environmental and land-use issues from the low zip codes. The best single journalistic source devoted to these subjects is the award-winning biweekly newspaper, the High Country News, published in Paonia, Colorado. It has a clever, well-indexed Website, www.hcn.org. The New York Times covers Western environmental issues surprisingly well. It, like many Western papers large and small, is available on-line. Hard copies of many Western papers are available at Princeton, where Rutgers students can get reciprocal library privileges.
     Planning and geographic academic/professional journals and magazines--e.g., Journal of the American Planning Association, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Geographical Review, Natural Resources Journal, Planning Magazine, and Focus--often deal with the West. Several historical journals--e.g., Western Historical Quarterly and Journal of the West--specialize in the region. A number of listserves are useful: WestWeb, RangeNet, PlaNet and Envirotech, among others.
     The best source for learning quickly about any American place is the Almanac of American Politics, published biennially. In addition to superb political information, it offers excellent short histories and physical descriptions of every U.S. state and congressional district. If you need to find out fast about, say, northern Idaho or West Los Angeles (or southern New Jersey), start with the Almanac. It is available both in the Rutgers library and across the street at the New Brunswick Public Library.
     Historians write more than other academics about the West and in recent years have focused on environmental history. Two good general histories of the region from this perspective are Richard White's "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A History of the American West (1991) and Robert Hine and John Mack Faragher's The American West: A New Interpretive History (2000). John Opie's Nature's Nation: An Environmental History of the United States (1998) has lots of good Western material, as does The New Encyclopedia of the American West (1998), edited by Howard Lamar and available in the Rutgers library and the New Brunswick one.
     Academics other than historians, as well as people with no connection to academia, write usefully about Western environmental issues. Recent books I like are John Baden and Donald Snow's edited collection, The Next West: Public Lands, Community, and Economy in the American West (1998); Ernest Callenbach's Bring Back the Buffalo! A Sustainable Future for America's Great Plains (1996 and 2000); Timothy Duane's Shaping the Sierra: Nature, Culture and Conflict in the Changing West (1998); Dayton Duncan's Miles from Nowhere: Tales from America's Contemporary Frontier (1993); Daniel Licht's Ecology and Economics of the Great Plains (1997); Carolyn Merchant's edited collection, Green Versus Gold: Sources in California's Environmental History (1998); Thomas Michael Power's Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies: The Search for a Value of Place (1996); Stephen Pyne's How the Canyon Became Grand (1998); and Paul Starrs' Let the Cowboy Ride: Cattle Ranching in the American West (1998). But you should not have trouble finding your own sources.
     A vast number of Western-oriented public agencies and private organizations have interesting Websites and usually helpful staffs. Three private groups I like are Ecocity Builders in Berkeley, California; the Frontier Education Center in Ojo Sarco, New Mexico; and the Great Plains Restoration Council in Denver. Full disclosure: I am on their boards.