Air University Review, September-October 1969

In Search of an Aviation
Environment Master Plan

Major William R. Sims
Captain Angelo J. Cerchione

From a perch well above the soldiers and artisans laboring on the walls, he sat with his plans he before him, carefully noting the progress of the work. Fortifying this place was not a simple undertaking—not as simple as had first been indicated by the council of elders. The census when taken proved that the plans for the outer walls had been inadequate. Less than half the people in the region would have been able to find shelter here.

Below, the gangs of men struggled with massive stones which in the hands of his masons would become walls, gates and passageways. The work itself was relatively easy. However, it was the long, interminable talks with the people who would ultimately occupy this place that he found monumentally exhausting, sometimes frustrating work.

His thoughts turned to the still unfinished inner walls. Somehow within that defensive core true self-sufficiency had to be achieved. In addition to the palace and the temple which had long occupied this favored high ground, there was need for a cistern and a granary. It was enough to split a soldier’s brain. He leaned his head back against a boulder and tried to remember a day when life had been simpler.

Man has come a long way since the days when his communities were ringed with walls and defense was the city’s raison d’être. Military reservations today are being surrounded by cities, and defense seems somehow not directly related to the security of neighboring communities. However, the evolutionary force that severed the military man from his role as an urban planner is about to bring them together again.

The United States is beset with urban problems that can only be solved by agencies working together at all levels of government. So pervasive are the effects of growth and change that the complexity of the situation has begun to cast military men in roles with which they are not entirely familiar. Daily they may be found in earnest conversations with zoning commissioners, Federal Aviation Administration officials, mayors and town councilmen, airport operators, school principals, city planners, sanitary and highway engineers. These conversations are as important to the survival of a base as is its ability to defend itself against an aggressor; but, unfortunately, these many diverse yet interrelated activities have often been pursued in an uncoordinated manner. This fragmentation of purpose may pose a very real danger to the future of Air Force bases. Some of the changes taking place in the United States, both on the ground and in the air, are indeed recasting the military’s role in urban and regional planning. More important, such changes point to the need for a higher order of coordination among base agencies and between base and town.

The historical precedent is there to be studied, for at one time the city builders were also the city protectors. No less an authority than Arnold Toynbee reminds us of the original purpose of the city:

Cities . . . were an exceptional form of human settlement, and their abnormality was signalized and symbolized by the wall that demarcated a primitive city’s diminutive area from the vast surrounding countryside. Behind and within these physical defenses, a new form of social life could, and did, take shape. The Greek word for city—polis—originally meant a citadel, and this citadel might consist of nothing but a ring-wall surrounding the crown of a hill.¹

In the years since the Greeks coined the word polis, the character of warfare has changed. In the process Toynbee’s citadel was divorced from its urban core, and the two were sent in separate directions. The core remained at stage center while its defensive shell was sent into the wings. Except for the frontier forts and seacoast defenses, military establishments in the United States were relegated to the more remote parts of the country. During the past 75 years, America’s wars have been fought somewhere beyond its borders. Its military camps became jumping-off places for troops bound for distant fronts rather than fortresses charged with the immediate defense of a nearby city. This was no less true for the nation’s emerging aviation arm.

The Air Force, with its mandate to train great numbers of men in the relatively new and risky art of flying, invariably selected base sites that lay far from neighboring towns. In point of fact, the present-day standard for a virgin base limits siting to no closer than 15 miles but no farther than 25 miles from its “support city.”² Fortunately, many of the sites originally chosen were among the best the country had to offer. By the late 1950s the Air Force was comfortably ensconced on some 9.6 million acres of land that is currently worth $14 billion.³ Equivalent in size to Connecticut, Delaware, and New Jersey, this land is composed of approximately 2900 separate sites, only a hundred of which have a flying mission.

The trek into the wilderness may be nearing an end, for the military is about to return to its ancient role of deep involvement in city and regional planning. This stems partially from the fact that Americans are buying more homes, and, like hyperactive bacteria in an agreeable Petri dish, new communities are rapidly spreading outward from the old population centers. Generally speaking, the movement seems to be in the direction of the Air Force’s once remote bases.

In part, the predicament arises from population growth. During the Second World War, posters proclaimed that 160 million Americans had gone to war. Today Americans number 200 million, and within less than a decade the country will add another 40 million.⁴

The dramatic increase in population has been accompanied and compounded by several other factors. In particular, the growing trend among Americans to leave the city for a home in the suburbs is putting new pressure on the remaining open spaces. In a book published last year, Air Transportation 1975 and Beyond: A Systems Approach, the root causes of the city-to-country flight were identified. “Increasing incomes and the automobile, abetted by the Federal policy that built roads and guaranteed home mortgages, made possible the home in the suburbs.”⁵ Once an appreciable number of people had settled in an area, business and industry would be attracted to this new market and labor pool.

Into the suburbs and beyond the homesteaders advanced, and no movement as vast as this could take place without affecting the rest of the country. Lewis Mumford, in his book The Urban Prospect, lashes out at the excesses which accompany the exodus now in progress:

The upper-income group image of urban dispersion is the green ghetto of the exurban community, just far enough beyond the metropolitan center and its spreading suburban belt to be able to zone its territory for housing at a minimum density of one family to the acre. . . Every year, . . . a million acres of agricultural land are taken over for housing, largely scattered in green acres, and another million acres are withheld from farming through speculation and social erosion.⁶

In the aviation world, the civilian airports generally were the first to come in contact with this latest wave of settlers. As airports are traditionally located closer to the communities they serve than are Air Force bases, many airport owners and operators soon came to realize that they were directly in the path of rapidly advancing communities.

Although the public initially considered the airport to be much like any other business, its effect is far more potent, for an airdrome close to a highway system helps to form a transportation nexus. A dynamic component, the airport has all the life-giving force of an irrigation system. In its primary capacity it moves people, and where people congregate—even momentarily—business flourishes. This economic growth always means better employment opportunities, and the newly employed prefer to live closer to their jobs. The attractiveness to airport employees of shortened commuting distances is one factor that influences home developers to encroach upon the lands bordering an airport.⁷ Finally, it is only a matter of time before the new settlers become fully acquainted with an airport’s almost continuous aircraft noise. Here are the oil and water that will not mix: unregulated urban growth and jet noise.

When confronted with the noise problem, most people assume that science will soon come to their rescue. But the Jet Aircraft Noise Panel of the Office of Science and Technology has reported that development of a quiet engine is not even on the horizon.⁸

With no hope in sight for a breakthrough in engine noise suppression, a second avenue must be explored: controlling urban growth near airports. Recently, civilian aviators and planners have begun to stump for joint airport/community planning in the aviation magazines. A leading planning consultant, H. McKinley Conway, Jr., has called for such an approach: “. . . the typical within-the-fence-only airport master plan is a luxury we can no longer afford. For every airport, there must be an airport area plan which integrates the airport into the urban complex.”⁹

At the heart of most area plans is one of two basic techniques for converting an airport into a compatible neighbor. Airport management (or community leaders) either may seek to create a buffer between themselves and their neighbors through the outright purchase of surrounding acreage or obtain zoning protection through special legislation.

Although the first alternative is an expensive one, developers of jumbo jetports are seriously considering the land buffer option. In fact, the Dade-Collier International Airport in the Florida Everglades is large enough to hold four of the nation’s biggest airports.

As planned, Dade-Collier will cover 39 square miles, and under a twin-county agreement it will be zoned for aviation use three miles beyond the boundaries of the jetport proper, making a total of 51 square miles devoted exclusively to aircraft operations.¹⁰ As the Honorable Earl M. Starnes, vice-mayor of Metropolitan Dade County, has pointed out: “Dade-Collier has not only been planned to contain aircraft and allied industries, but to serve as a container of aircraft noise.”¹¹

How well do USAF bases stack up as “noise containers”? Not too well. Depending on a number of factors, it would take somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-30,000 acres of land to embrace what the bioenvironmental engineers define as “Zone 2” and “Zone 3” noise levels (see box). Of the 100 USAF bases whose primary mission involves flying, only 11 have sufficient acreage to qualify as containers of noise. Excluding Eglin and Ed-wards AFB’s (464,980 and 301,000 acres respectively), the other 98 bases average only 6400 acres.¹²

There is another reason for possessing such large tracts of land: to exclude high-density housing from a potentially dangerous area. According to the Directorate of Aerospace Safety, in a report entitled “Summary of USAF Aircraft Accidents in Vicinity of Airfields 5 Mile Zone,” almost ten percent of all aircraft accidents happen within an air base’s control area. Based on 174 USAF accidents in 1960-64, the report leaves no doubt about this high-hazard area for dwellings, and it concludes with the recommendation that “. . . base commanders use this summary as a basis for discouraging local civil authorities from approving zoning requests for housing and commercial enterprises in areas along the extended centerline of runways for at least two and one half miles.”¹³ (See Figure 1.)

Recently, the study was used for just that purpose by a southwestern Air Force base seeking to secure the support of its local community council in countering the threat of urban encroachment. Alarmed by the report that work was soon to begin on a housing development a short distance from the base, the commander advised local officials of the predictable aftereffects. They held meetings to investigate the matter thoroughly. The base’s zoning protection flows from a county airport zoning ordinance, enacted in 1957. Similar to many such ordinances in effect in the United States, it seeks to promote the health, safety, and general welfare of the county’s inhabitants by preventing the creation or establishment of airport hazards as public nuisances.¹⁴ This ordinance was probably adequate for its task in 1957, when the airports subject to its provisions were surrounded by desert or agricultural lands. The county has since had a phenomenal rate of growth (second in the nation), and the nearby desert and farms are fast disappearing beneath concrete and asphalt.

If lives, property, and the public investment are to be safeguarded by zoning, its definition of hazards must be broadened to include the effects of urban encroachment. To remedy the shortcomings of the county ordinance, the base commander suggested to city and county officials that the area surrounding the base be zoned for low-density housing—one house every one or two acres. This recommended low-density belt (seven and three-quarter miles long by two and one-half miles wide) encompasses the high-hazard area identified in the Directorate of Aerospace Safety’s five-year study. Further, the suggested revision emphasizes that this same area is also subject to Zone 2 and Zone 3 levels of noise intensity.

In this particular instance the classic textbook solution is being sought. Fortunately, the commander and his staff recognized the incipient encroachment trend in time to take action, and they found local agreement that the base’s recommendations were sound and that the base had the welfare of its neighbors at heart. At this writing the ordinance revision has not yet been approved, but the progressive spirit manifested by both the base and its neighbors exemplifies this important lesson: timely urban planning is the foundation of tomorrow’s successful community relations.

When the trend toward urban encroachment is ignored, the problem may become a much more difficult one. For when poor planning allows two community subsystems (e.g., a base and a housing development) to become entrenched in a situation in which only one can survive, the resulting conflict may cause untold hardship for the entire region. Only recently has it been accepted that cities, like the men who built them, can sicken and die. Restoring health and vigor to a stricken community or base is surely a herculean task. On the edge of the Sonoran Desert, for example, an Air Force base is now receiving such intensive treatment. Its history sheds light on the collective efforts necessary to improve what is fast becoming a hostile environment caused by the urban growth in its direction.

First indication of the potential threat to the base (referred to in a recent issue of the Review¹⁵) came in a report entitled, Urban Encroachment Study, 1968-1990,¹⁶ which sought to project future growth trends of the communities surrounding the base. The study was primarily concerned with the question, “At what point in time will the constricting urban matrix cause the flying mission to be outlawed?”

Obtaining the necessary research data was a simple matter. Each of the 12 nearby communities had commissioned studies to guide their long-range development. Several were little more than inventories of community resources, but most of them discussed in detail projected population growth and eventual use of the surrounding land area. Put together in mosaic fashion, a composite map encompassing some 500 square miles graphically draws attention to the future growth intentions of the region.

In recent years, two urban corridors extending from the metropolis to the east have begun to converge on the base in a pincerlike movement. According to all the urban studies consulted, the area surrounding the base is one of three major areas in the region in which future population expansion should be expected. At the predicted rate of growth, the base has only five to ten years before nearby communities begin to crowd into its high aircraft disaster potential areas and intense noise zones.

Not all the base’s problems are so far off. Plans are being considered to open a university branch campus next year a mile from the perimeter fence and well within the Zone 2 noise intensity pattern (estimated enrollment by 1985: 36,000). Farther south a satellite airport anticipates within the next five years a fleet of some 300 permanently based light aircraft. To further complicate the situation, plans are being made to use this facility as a training site for large commercial jet aircraft (mainly for “touch and go’s”). This could lead to a dangerous airspace problem, since our air base has over 200 jet fighters in combat crew training.

If disregarded, this situation would lead to an easily predictable outcome. However, from the moment the Urban Encroachment Study defined the problem, it was apparent that an enlightened solution would require a fully coordinated staff effort. For this reason a Community Relations Advisory Committee was formed. Chaired by the wing vice commander, it has as permanent members the base commander, deputy commander for operations, base civil engineer, and the heads of the legal, safety, and information offices. A wing supplement to AFR 190-20, “Community Relations Program,” requires all base agencies to integrate their activities into the overall wing community relations program.¹⁷

An interdisciplinary group is charged with the formulation of long-range community relations plans, and it has within its membership the expertise to carry out those plans. It amounts to an urban planning board which is actively seeking to communicate with all local organizations on the future of the base and the community.

To launch its broad-gauged community relations program, the committee sent copies of the Urban Encroachment Study to city and county zoning authorities, the state’s department of aeronautics, the communities that were inadvertently fostering the encroachment problem, legislators representing the affected areas, higher headquarters, and a number of other interested individuals. In addition, briefings were given to several key transportation committees inquiring into the future needs of aviation in the state.

To secure the greatest possible legal protection, the committee is also investigating the possibility of having the county zone the areas beneath the runway approaches for low-density housing. It is within these same approach limits, the Directorate of Aerospace Safety emphasized, that 56 percent of all the base-side aircraft accidents occur.

Since the cluttering of local airspace is part of a broader problem stretching beyond state borders, the base joined with several state agencies to host a symposium on the need for master-planning the aviation environment; a second symposium is planned for December 1969. Out of that first symposium grew a movement to create a state air transportation master plan and the necessary legislation to make it possible.

As with the earlier case study, a quick fix is not anticipated because of the variety and complexity of the interests involved. The course set for the base may not bear fruit for a number of years, but it offers the hope of ultimately being able to achieve a rational solution with the help of local citizens and community agencies. While it is too early to be able to pass judgment on the effectiveness of this particular program, the integrated broad-spectrum approach is worthy of emulation on an Air Force-wide basis. Certainly the problem is becoming that widespread.

The danger always in sounding alarms is to be regarded as either a Chicken Little or a Cassandra and summarily dismissed. Yet one need only awaken from the dream that there still exists a frontier America of inexhaustible resources to realize that the problems are rapidly multiplying while the options are steadily dwindling. Happily, the continent is still a plastic medium that can be molded, but time may allow it to solidify before its man-made deformities can be eliminated.

In the two case histories discussed, a variety of techniques were employed to solve looming urban problems. Of these, which elements should a basic program contain?

The single step which more than any other will determine how soon (if ever) a base will have homes sidling up to its perimeter fence is the accomplishment of an encroachment study. Depending upon the installation, this can be as simple as a chat with the town clerk or as complex as the 60-page study mentioned earlier. It should be remembered that this regional survey plots the occupation of land by home owners against time; but without an accompanying jet aircraft noise intensity study it is meaningless. The base bioenvironmental engineer has the capability to perform this service; in fact, the study should be on file as part of the installation’s master plans. The combination of the two studies will afford an accurate picture of the extent of encroachment around the base.

Whether these studies indicate trouble ahead or not, the pace at which change occurs at the local and regional levels dictates an early formulation of a base policy guidance group. One useful approach has been the Community Relations Advisory Committee mentioned earlier. This group focuses attention directly on the “total community” aspects of the base’s existence. It does so not only by constantly evaluating its position vis-à-vis those who share the surrounding ground and airspace but also by continually examining its spiritual and psychological links with its neighbors. Further, this group could establish base “identity” concepts appropriate to present and projected missions. It could periodically assess the base and all its activities in relation to its position within the total local and regional fabric.

Once the base’s policies have been defined and the activities of participating agencies have been orchestrated, specific objectives and guidance might be given to such specialized groups as the Real Property Resource Review Board. This board is charged with solving zoning problems and with maintaining liaison with physical environment planners. Other agencies as well would receive their mandates from the advisory committee, for at the very core would be a master plan that enunciates goals based upon a full understanding of the total physical and psychological setting. Such comprehensive planning is vital if the base is to accomplish its mission without antagonizing the public, upon whom the Air Force depends for support.

Many of the individual projects we have mentioned were established in response to a particular set of circumstances. How far the Community Relations Advisory Committee may wish to pursue public education programs or cooperative association with the military and civilian aviation communities will have to be determined by the local situation. Once the interdisciplinary advisory committee has been formed and the basic survey of the local environment has been made, any number of major or minor variations may be employed.

It is the integrated committee approach which is most important, for in years past each agency went its own way in dealing with problems peculiar to its discipline. Like the seven blind men examining the elephant, each had a narrow view of reality. Hence, the flight safety people made an in-depth study of the incidence of aircraft accidents within five miles of the base; the information office staff devised programs to explain to the public that aircraft noise is a modern-day necessity; the civil engineer updated the base master plans once a year to satisfy an outmoded regulation; the base commander met with local organizations and tried to win a new, critically needed bridge or replied repeatedly to official nuisance complaints; the flight facilities officer sought to protect his airspace from constant assault by commercial jets, parachutists, crop dusters, and balloonists; and the legal officer prepared a defense for a newly enacted zoning ordinance because a local citizen rightly or wrongly felt that it was an abridgment of his rights. This cannot be the way in which the world’s most modern Air Force will step into the coming decades.

The America of the 1970s and ‘80s will be bigger, more complex, wealthier, more exciting—and a dozen other positive or negative superlatives. Civilian aviation will be seeking some 800 new airports to add to the 10,000 already in operation. Certain segments of the aviation industry are predicting a 400 percent increase in business within a decade. And in the midst of this turned-on country will be the United States Air Force with its continuing mission of safeguarding the liberties of some 260 million Americans.

The time is at hand for the Air Force to take its position in the vanguard of the movement for comprehensive long-range urban and regional planning. To do so would be to protect the public’s investment in its air arm and to ensure that the Air Force of tomorrow will possess a system of bases unfettered by debilitating urban problems.

From his office near the flight line, he sat with the base master plans before him, noting the work his office had nurtured through to completion. Serving the new mission was not a simple undertaking—not as simple as had first been indicated by headquarters. First, it was the new construction for that behemooth the C-5, and then came the V/STOL requirement. And all of it had to be shoehorned into 6400 acres.
His thoughts turned to the newly enacted regional zoning ordinance. The best of many thousands of years of man’s experience in learning to live together with other men went into its making. He could not help smiling as he thought of this achievement which he and the base urban planning group had brought off. With that kind of creativity available to the world, who need be afraid of the twenty-first century with its billions of people? He leaned his head back and laughed aloud, exulting in his strength, and tried to remember a day when life had been more beautiful.

Luke Air Force Base, Arizona

Notes

1. Arnold Toynbee, ed., Cities of Destiny (London: McGraw-Hill Book company, 1967), p. 13.

2. “Site Selection (New Bases),” Air Base Master Planning Manual AFM 86-6, February 10, 1959, Chapter 6, pp. 35-37.

3. William Marlow, realty specialist, Hg USAF, an interview, June 1968.

4. Leslie L. Thomason, “Manna in the Marketplace: Constraints in the System,” Master Planning of Airspace: A Total System Approach (Verbatim), October 26, 1968, p. 7.

5. Bernard A. Schriever and William W. Seifert, Air Transportation 1975 and Beyond. A Systems Approach, Report of the Transportation Workshop (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1968), p. 4.

6. Lewis Mumford, The Urban Prospect (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968), pp. 130-31.

7. Airports like New York’s John F. Kennedy International may have as many as 37,500 employees. At both military and civilian airports, such a group becomes the spearhead of urban encroachment.

8. “The Alleviation of Jet Aircraft Noise near Airports,” U.S. Office of Science and Technology, March 1966, quoted by Schriever and Seifert, op. cit., p. 28.

9. H. McKinley Conway, Jr., “Crisis in Airport Planning,” Airport World, I. 2 (November1968), 50.

10. Earl M. Starnes, “Airport Operation and Urban Planning,” Master Planning of Airspace: A Total Systems Approach, p. 72.

11. From a personal conversation during the symposium sponsored by the Arizona Department of Aeronautics, Arizona State University, and Luke Air Force Base, 26 October 1968.

12. “Guide to Air Force Bases,” Air Force and Space Digest, September 1968, pp. 182-96.

13. “Summary of USAF Aircraft Accidents in Vicinity of Airfields 5 Mile Zone,” Directorate of Aerospace Safety, Deputy The Inspector General, USAF, Norton AFB, California, Study No. 21-65. pp. 1-2.

14. Airport Zoning Ordinance, County of Maricopa, State of Arizona, p. 1.

15. Angelo J. Cerchione, “A Case for Continuity,” Air University Review, XX, 3 (March-April 1969), 39.

16. Urban Encroachment Study, 1968-1990, Office of Information, Luke AFB, Arizona, August 1968.

17. “Community Relations Program,” AFR 190-20, Luke AFB Supplement 1, 21 August 1968, para 3b-5.

Contributors

Major William R. Sims (M.F.A., Architecture, Princeton University) is Course Director, Base Civil Engineer Course, Air Force Institute of Technology, where he specializes in base master planning. An AFROTC graduate of the University of Kentucky, he has served in maintenance and civil engineering assignments at Andrews AFB, Maryland, 1958-61; RAF Station, Bentwaters, England, l963-67; and at Don Muang RTAFB, Thailand, 1967-68, where he was also Chief of Programs. Major Sims is registered in Kentucky as a land surveyor, engineer, and architect. His “Architecture of the Lunar Base” was published in Proceedings of the Lunar and Planetary Space Exploration Colloquium (1963).

Captain Angelo J. Cerchione (B.A., Michigan State University) is Chief, Information Division, 4510th Combat Crew Training Wing. TAC, Luke AFB, Arizona. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1952 and served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Midway, reverting to inactive reserve in 1958. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1958, attended Michigan State University in 1962 under the Airmen Education Commissioning Program, and was commissioned in 1963. He served as Information Officer, 81st Tactical Fighter Wing, RAF Station, Bentwaters, 1964-67. In 1966 his unit received the American Ambassador’s Award for Community Relations. He has attended the Air Force Course in Public Relations and Communications, Boston University.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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