Wye Island (Resources for the Future) - Tapa dura

"'Chickenneckers' are city folk who come to Maryland's Eastern Shore with crab traps and chicken necks for bait. They crowd the bridge railings, docks, and public landings. The local people wish they would go away. This book is about the 'line between insiders and outsiders, between the excluders and the excluded.' In 1974, Jim Rouse, developer of Maryland's planned city, Columbia, announced his intention to build a similar community on the Eastern Shore's Wye Island. The alternative to his carefully conceived plan was a set of cookie-cutter subdivisions. But the same people who resented the chickenneckers wanted no part of Rouse's concept of the future. Gibbons describes Wye Island and its environs, its history, and its people with skill and objectivity. The book is excellent in all respects and should be read by those who care about the future of our communities." -- Library Journal, 6/15/1977

"This is not a scientific publication. The book contains no literature citation, it contains no reports on controlled scientific experiment, it contains no data, and there are no conclusions. It is a story of people in conflict over the attempted development of Wye Island, a small isalnd in the Chesapeake Bay off the Maryland Eastern Shore. The story centers around Jim Rouse, the developer of Columbia, Maryland, and other planned cities, and his efforts to develop Wye Isalnd in an environmentally acceptable manner. Jim had spent his boyhood near Wye Island, when the Eastern Shore was primarily rural, and wanted to protect the concept of 'open spaces' in his plan to develop the island for others to enjoy. Arrayed against him and his plan were the 'natives,' who opposed any change that would bring in outsiders, and the 'recent natives' who had moved in, established their estates, panoramic views, and seclusion, but did not anyone else to spoil these for them. In the end, Rouse and his plan were defeated, but Wye Island was saved from being subdivided into five acre lots by the State of Maryland, which purchased the island for open farming. Boyd Gibbons is an excellent writer. Through the use of flashbacks and maps, the reader is given a graphic account of the history of Maryland's Eastern Shore, the trials and tribulations of its early working-class inhabitants -- mostly farmers and fishermen -- and the luxury enjoyed by its rich inhabitants. With this background the reader is better able to understand why the people reacted as they did to Rouse's plan... Wye Island should be on the reading list of anyone involved in land-use planning. It addresses itself to that very nebulous subject of 'socio-economic' impact. While it gives no answers, it does give the planner an insight as to why people react the way they do to proposed changes." -- Journal of Environmental Quality, 1977