Freeways have had a stronger imprint on the form, environmental qualities, and social fabric of American cities than any single type of public investment. Yet until now, surprisingly little scholarly attention has been given to their evolution and cumulative impacts on city life. This timely book provides a rich historical account of how shifts in urban priorities, disciplinary mindsets, and regulatory climates have shaped and reshaped the designs, roles, and images of America's principal channel-ways. Underpinning most freeway projects, we learn, have been a host of competing agendas, be they job creation, blight removal, or exurban development. Political and social conflicts have been unavoidable, prompting a twenty-first-century movement of freeway demolitions, chronicled in the epilogue. This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about the planning and design of American cities, past, present, and future.
Robert Cervero, Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley
Changing Lanes is a unique addition to American highway literature. Many have looked inside the highway establishment, but DiMento and Ellis place the evolution of highway policy within its rich context of urban politics and design. This work is deeply researched and subtle conclusions are illustrated by insightful case studies.
Martin Wachs, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and UCLA; Senior Principal Researcher at the RAND Corporation
Joseph DiMento and Cliff Ellis highlight a largely neglected part of freeway history, the contest of ideas and visions of the freeway's role in the city among professional architects, landscape architects, planners, and engineers. Their richly detailed case studies illustrate that the tension between the often-conflicting worldviews of these professionals ultimately resolved itself in a way that privileged the freeway's traffic-carrying role with profound consequences, both for good and for ill, for the development of the city and the lives of its residents.
Jeffrey Brown, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Florida State University
Freeway histories have generally been of two sorts: stories of the builders of the Interstate Highway System, and stories of freeway planning and revolts in particular cities. Changing Lanes is unique in weaving these together to consider the competing visions for urban freeways that have so profoundly shaped American cities.
Brian D. Taylor, FAICP, Professor of Urban Planning, Director, Ralph & Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, Director, Institute of Transportation Studies, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
