Design Of Weldments

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Following World War II, Americans' prosperity and enthusiasm for outdoor recreation, along with government policies and aggressive development tactics, led to the profound transformation of the countryside. Over the 1950s and 1960s, recreational development converted small, rural communities into bustling "seasonal cities": urbanized pockets of development near natural amenities characterized by massive development projects, seasonal fluctuations in population, and recreational tourism as a foundation of the local economy. A new manifestation of capitalist pressures in the countryside, seasonal cities had dramatic environmental, social, and fiscal consequences for rural communities.;This study demonstrates that seasonal cities were important sites of environmental contestation, exerting a lasting influence on environmental politics and land use governance. Through analyses of seasonal cities in the Lake Tahoe Basin of California and Nevada, the Yampa Valley of Colorado, and the Green Mountains of Vermont, it shows that a diverse array of rural residents sought to safeguard public amenities--scenic beauty, wildlife habitat, clean water, open spaces, and solvent municipal services--from the development patterns that had so altered suburban areas. Challenging long-standing rural values, they fought for land use planning and government regulation of private land use. Their defense of the public good resulted in unprecedented state-level oversight of land use decisions.;The passage of state land use acts in the early 1970s marked a key epoch in environmental politics. Demonstrating an important shift in land use governance and a unique moment in America's ongoing relationship with federalism, many citizens held that state-level governance would better protect public amenities than local decision-making. The adoption of state land use acts further reflected a broad challenge to deeply-entrenched national values: the emphasis on economic growth as an unequivocal boon to the nation and the view of private property rights as sacrosanct. Despite the significance of state land use acts, their impact was muted by the changing economic and political climate. The weakening of most state land use acts over the late 1970s heralded the devolution of environmental controls and the strong reassertion of private property rights that occurred in late twentieth century environmental politics.