Abstract
The legal aspects of park master planning are the most important determinants of the succes or failure of long-range master plans. In the absence of certain specific or adequate legislation (protecting parklands from other intrusions), the park planner stands helplessly by as his park development program dwind- less to less of a reality, and less of a possibility, and his master plan becomes a paper dream. He barely has time to update his land-use plan before pressures develop for other actions, or he learns of a new sprinkling of houses, like so many lethal antigens across the countryside, or another wide ribbon of highway crisscrossing his favored tree stands, slicing up treasured meadows, severing parklands from populations.