Sustainable Development

A lesson for real-estate developers, builders, town-planners, this extract from President Theodore Roosevelt's speech at the Grand Canyon in May 1903: "In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which, so
far as I know, is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the
rest of the world. I want to ask you to do one thing in connection
with it in your own interest and in the interest of the country - to
keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I was delighted to
learn of the wisdom of the Santa Fe railroad people in deciding
not to build their hotel on the brink of the canyon. I hope you
will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a ho-
tel, or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublim-
ity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon.
Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it.
The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.
What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's
children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great
sights which every American if he can travel at all should see.
We have gotten past the stage, my fellow-citizens, when we are
to be pardoned if we treat any part of our country as something
to be skinned for two or three years for the use of the present
generation, whether it is the forest, the water, the scenery. What-
ever it is, handle it so that your children's children will get the
benefit of it.