Mining, planning, and the urban environment

Abstract

As our populations grow and the processes of urbanization continue, new demands for minerals, space, and environmental quality will become increasingly important. Unfortunately, these demands as they relate to the mineral producer or consumer, the local businessman or municipal planner, and the urban dweller are not always mutually compatible. The mineral producer usually is dependent upon relatively low‐cost land and a close proximity to markets, primarily established and expanding urban regions. Growing urban areas need minerals such as coal for fuel, but not the subsidence of abandoned and collapsing mines; they need limestone for cement, but not the dust released during blasting; they need sand and gravel for roads and building construction, but not the stream sedimentation created during washing operations. These urban areas also need taxes and space if they are to grow. City dwellers may desire a home in the suburban fringe, the same area that probably holds the region's most economically exploitable mineral reserves. The new suburbanite, having fled the noise, vibration, and dust of the city's traffic and factories, does not like the prospect of similar hazards associated with a local gravel plant. These conflicting economic, social, and personal needs and costs must be reconciled. Efforts are underway to identify more precisely the dimensions of these problems and to reduce or eliminate them. Mineral producers, city officials, and planners are, in many areas, seeking to develop systems of compromise or ways of optimizing mineral resource and land use, zoning regulations, and environmental quality.