In the 1960s, the conflict between Robert Moses, chairman of the New York state/city-affiliated highway authority and Jane Jacobs, urban sociologist helping the residents oppose the highway, over how to remodel the city of New York symbolized the sharpening of the dispute between state and local administrations versus local community, and its turning point in highway planning philosophy. The most conflicting case was the interstate highway named the Lower Manhattan Expressway (Lomex) crossing the southern tip of densely built-up Manhattan Island, the district of SoHo. Both Moses and Jacobs had to leave the scene in 1968, because Moses resigned his post and Jacobs left for Canada after her arrest at the public hearing of Lomex. The John Lindsay Administration of New York City eventually had to accept the duty to tackle this issue. Despite several books written by eminent writers such as Robert Caro (1974), Anthony Flint (2009), Scott Larson (2013) and Jean Dory (2018), they focused on the relationship between Moses and Jacobs from the perspective of their conflicts. Therefore, it was unclear what kind of administrative actions had been taken by the Lindsay administration during the period since 1968 until Governor Rockefeller’s termination notice of Lomex project in 1971. The author tried to clarify the process between through discovering relevant public information and documents concerned with this issue.

 When planning highways in urban areas, it is required for local planning bodies to reach an agreement on its necessity with the community along the route in a prospect of community benefits. If being based on the agreement, the concept of “Joint Development” to utilize the air-right above the highway for new public facilities will be meaningful. It was originally studied and conceptualized by the Federal government in 1968 as a possible clue for the highway planning. As the Federal-Aid Highway Act introduced the concept of joint development, it was designed to integrate such a single-purpose agency of highway planning as the state highway bureau with other multiple local planning bodies, in a wider prospect. The Lindsay administration attempted to search an agreeable solution to the highway problem by using this method. They started preparation in early 1969 to launch a new study scheme of joint development by the special task force of social-economic and environmental expertise.

 Just prior to this planned study, the City Environmental Bureau disclosed the result of air pollution simulation of planned Lomex that indicated a highly polluted air for public facilities above the open-cut structure. When decreasing air pollution caused by heavy traffic, it could not be expected a satisfactory progress in foreseeable future because of the then technological limitation of automobile industry. The joint development became hardly to proceed. In 1969 the Lindsay administration declared the termination of Lomex with a reason as the residents opposition.

 After Lomex, the Lindsay administration still tried to apply joint development to other highway reform projects, but could not succeed. Since the failure of the Lindsay Administration, all successive city administrations have avoided planning new urban highways in New York.

This study examines the impacts of political direct mail on grassroots activism by investigating the fundraising drives of the Barry Goldwater campaign in the 1964 presidential election. Goldwater was the first conservative politician nominated by the Republican Party. With enthusiastic support from the right wing, especially anticommunist organizations such as the John Birch Society (JBS), the Goldwater campaign indicated that anti-liberalism could be a national political force in the United States. Throughout the 1964 election, Goldwaterites contacted millions of voters, built up the collective identity of conservatives, and suggested the GOP would be able to make gains in the West and the South. Despite the resounding defeat on Election Day, the Goldwater movement set down the groundwork for the rise of conservatism in the following decades.

Goldwater’s fundraising campaign also transformed a long-term pattern in political contribution. Direct mail was a new marketing technique of the advertising industry in the postwar era. Unlike mass media including newspaper, radio, and television, direct mail functioned as a personalized medium which distributed different message to individuals, instead of standardized information to the masses. By sending out millions of fundraising letters, Goldwater carved out political niches and constructed a huge database of conservative Americans during the election. Simultaneously, direct mail solicitation changed the amount of each contribution. Prior to the 1960s, both major parties had depended largely on big contributions by business interests and philanthropists. Yet direct mail made it possible to tap small funds such as one or five dollars, opening the door for small money politics. After the Goldwater campaign successfully received the mass of small contributions, Democrats and Republicans began to raise funds from ordinary voters.

This article explores the 1964 Goldwater movement, focusing on two right-wing groups. The JBS mobilized many middle-class Americans in suburban areas throughout the Sunbelt, and a cadre of New York conservatives, including conservative intellectual William F. Buckley Jr., National Review publisher William A. Rusher, and political consultant Marvin Liebman, carried out advertising campaigns on Goldwater’s behalf. Whereas the JBS encouraged the grassroots to join the movement through local chapters across the nation, the New York conservatives reached out to individuals with direct mailings. Contrasting the two types of activism, this study analyzes the interactions between the leadership and the grassroots, as well as controversies within the conservative movement in 1964.

The 1964 presidential election demonstrates that Goldwater’s direct mail added a new definition of grassroots activism in political campaigns. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the 1830s, associations and communities characterized American democracy. However, direct mail as the personalized medium directly connected the leadership to the grassroots without any censorship and regulation, and the information technology recast the grassroots from “activism based on face-to-face relationship” toward “accumulation of small involvements.” Thus, the Goldwater campaign not only galvanized the conservative movement but also influenced political participation in 1960s America.