Incompatible land use around Hollywood-Burbank airport

This study was inaugurated in the belief that understanding the origins of present land use is requisite to solving the problems of obtaining and maintaining compatible land uses within airport environments. The three basic factors influencing land use compatibility are identified as noise, hazard, and fear. The tolerance of specific areas to these factors varies according to the existing land use activity. Some land uses are not compatible within an airport environment, notably residential and institutional uses. Hollywood-Burbank Airport is used as the study example because it was created in a compatible rural environment which subsequently was surrounded by urban land uses, some of which are incompatible with the airport operations. The historical development of land use patterns surrounding Hollywood-Burbank Airport is traced through the interpretation of air photographs from 1928 to 1970. The findings of this study reveal that the initial urban use of the land tends to persist and is difficult to change in order to maintain land use compatibility in an expanding airport environment. There is a need for comprehensive land use preplanning in a jet-age airport environment to ensure compatible land use. Hopefully, more effective and currently maintained research will be conducted to provide a better understanding of compatible land use in an airport environment and to provide palliative solutions to existing land use problems and proper preplanning for the jet-age airports of the future.