Open-space preservation seeded the local grassroots activism of the postwar environmental movement
Evidence
In addition to nudging a few old-line conservation organizations in new directions, the open-space issue inspired the kind of grassroots activism that became the heart of the environmental movement after 1970. In the 1950s and 1960s, Americans formed countless organizations to preserve patches of green in fast-growing cities and suburbs. Californians created People for Open Space. New Yorkers established the Open Space Action Institute, and citizens in St. Louis organized the Open Space Council. The threat of development also prompted ad hoc activism. “In every city and in thousands of towns and obscure neighborhoods,” the Saturday Evening Post reported in 1966, “there are housewives and homeowners banding together to fight, block by block, sometimes tree by tree, to save a small hill, a tiny brook, a stand of maples.” — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 559
Categorization
- XREF: This is the payoff of the book’s claim that suburban open-space loss generated new environmental causes (ch42); ties to reader’s LGST thread on institutions and local organizing. — connects to: Suburban open-space campaigns shaped environmentalist rhetoric and organizing — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 541; Conservation concerns migrated from forests and farms into metropolitan areas — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 1537; A child’s 1962 letter to Kennedy symbolized open-space loss anxiety — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 1532 (+8 more)
Broader Connections
- Open-space preservation logically expanded conservation’s scope to the whole environment
#expands(0.85) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 620 - Postwar land-use activism uniquely grounded protection in ecological process arguments
#expands(0.78) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 718 - Aerial photographs of bulldozed subdivisions became a core visual argument for open-space activists
#expands(0.75) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 572