ABSTRACT
The social and political context of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in its early years resulted in an emphasis on the goals of physical preservation at the expense of the social goals of the Act. The NHPA was one of several laws and other directives, including the Department of Transportation Act of 1966 and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), that required agencies to consider impacts to historic properties in federal planning and decision-making. In a retrospective of Gottmann's legacy, Richard Lyons notes that Jean Gottmann held an optimistic view of the urban area, crediting the north-eastern megalopolis with the highest contribution to educational, cultural, scientific, and technological development in the United States and emphasizing that future opportunities for advancement in these areas were the greatest within the megalopolis. The unifying theme of Great Society programs was the focus on social justice and the elimination of poverty.
