Summary

The story of the evolution of the urban freeway, the competing visions that informed it, and the emerging alternatives for more sustainable urban transportation.

Urban freeways often cut through the heart of a city, destroying neighborhoods, displacing residents, and reconfiguring street maps. These massive infrastructure projects, costing billions of dollars in transportation funds, have been shaped for the last half century by the ideas of highway engineers, urban planners, landscape architects, and architects -- with highway engineers playing the leading role. In Changing Lanes , Joseph DiMento and Cliff Ellis describe the evolution of the urban freeway in the United States, from its rural parkway precursors through the construction of the interstate highway system to emerging alternatives for more sustainable urban transportation.

DiMento and Ellis describe controversies that arose over urban freeway construction, focusing on three cases: Syracuse, which early on embraced freeways through its center; Los Angeles, which rejected some routes and then built I-105, the most expensive urban road of its time; and Memphis, which blocked the construction of I-40 through its core. Finally, they consider the emerging urban highway removal movement and other innovative efforts by cities to re-envision urban transportation.

Choice Review

In the 1930s, the US was in dire need of a national system of highways to connect its urban areas, while cities faced the daunting task of accommodating the automobile. DiMento (Univ. of California, Irvine) and Ellis (Clemson Univ.) describe the rise and then weakening of the highway juggernaut, which championed economy and convenience to the detriment of design considerations, environmental impacts, social consequences, and alternative forms of transportation. Throughout, they contrast the ideas of highway engineers with those of city planners, architects, and landscape architects. These latter professionals subsequently joined with citizen groups to defend urban neighborhoods and central business districts from limited-access expressways. Armed with new laws on environmental protection, historic preservation, and citizen participation, these citizens and professionals reined in, even if they failed to supplant, the highway engineers. The authors supplement the history with case studies of highway planning and opposition in Syracuse, Memphis, and Los Angeles, among other cities, and end by describing current efforts to demolish inner-city highways and replace them with parks and neighborhoods. A combination of descriptive history and normative planning principles, Changing Lanes is an informative introduction to a fascinating aspect of postwar urban development. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Students, upper-division undergraduate and up; faculty and researchers; professionals; general readers. R. A. Beauregard Columbia University