How to Fight a Texas-Sized Freeway Battle (Megan Kimble)
May 7, 2024
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Author Megan Kimble discusses grassroots efforts in Texas to fight highway expansions, highlighting the campaign to remove I-345 in Dallas. They delve into the impact of highway projects on communities and the need to challenge auto-centric city planning, with a focus on envisioning cities without highways like Rochester, New York.
Grassroots advocates resist highway expansions by powerful transportation departments, promoting city design around people not cars.
Author Megan Kimble's 'City Limits' reveals the negative impacts of highways on communities, advocating for sustainable urban environments.
Deep dives
Challenges of Grassroots Advocates Against Highway Expansion
Grassroots advocates face challenges in combating massive departments of transportation intent on widening highways in their neighborhoods. Author Meghan Campbell highlights the struggles faced by advocates taking on projects like the I-35 expansion in Austin, emphasizing the need to reimagine cities around people rather than cars. Despite being David to the Goliath-like Texas Department of Transportation, these advocates continue to resist such expansions, advocating for more productive use of land and funds.
Historical Context and Resistance to Urban Highways
Meghan Campbell's book, 'City Limits,' delves into the history of the interstate highway system and the impact of highways running through city cores. By examining freeway fights in Texas cities like Austin and Houston, Campbell explores the negative consequences of urban highway expansions. She uncovers how these highways were initially sold as progress in the 1950s and 60s, often disregarding the communities affected. The book reveals the resistance and outrage from citizens whose homes and neighborhoods were demolished for highway construction.
Future Vision of Cities Without Highways
The book 'City Limits' presents a vision of cities without urban highways, advocating for a more connected and sustainable urban environment. By highlighting successful projects like the interloop removal in Rochester, New York, the book challenges the conventional wisdom of car dependency and sprawl. The aim is to create cities that prioritize public transit, biking infrastructure, and community spaces over extensive highway systems. The vision is to invest in alternatives to highways, promoting a more vibrant, inclusive, and environmentally friendly urban landscape.
Across the country, grassroots advocates are fighting a David-and-Goliath-style battle against massive, powerful departments of transportation who are attempting to widen highways in their neighborhoods. And in her new book, City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways, author Megan Kimble introduces us to the many Davids who are taking on one of the biggest Goliaths of all: the Texas Department of Transportation.
In this extended audio version of our recent interview, Megan unpacks not just why the Lone Star state is so uniquely emblematic of the larger movement to re-imagine our cities around people rather than cars, but what’s happened to these projects in the months since she finished her essential book — and what advocates in states without a visible freeway fighting contingent can do to galvanize their neighbors.
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