Postwar land-use activism uniquely grounded protection in ecological process arguments

Evidence

Before World War II, preservationists and conservationists mainly sought to preserve places of extraordinary natural beauty and conserve important natural resources. The where-not-to-build activists of the 1950s and 1960s similarly used aesthetic and economic arguments to justify restrictions on private development of “sensitive lands.” But the where-not-to-build campaigns also depended to an unprecedented extent on ecological arguments. For the critics of suburban development, the importance of wetlands, hillsides, and floodplains did not lie primarily in their beauty or resources – all three kinds of land were most important as parts of natural processes. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 718

Categorization

• XREF: Process-based (not scenic/resource) valuation connects directly to ecosystem-services thinking in the eco-justice course. — connects to: Open-space preservation logically expanded conservation’s scope to the whole environment — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 620; McHarg held that technical planning tools were useless without changed land values — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 716; Open-space preservation seeded the local grassroots activism of the postwar environmental movement — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 559 (+3 more)