Changing Lanes

<b>The story of the evolution of the urban freeway the competing visions that informed it and the emerging alternatives for more sustainable urban transportation.</b><p>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 <i>Changing Lanes</i> 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.</p><p>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.</p>