A review by robertrivasplata
City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways by Megan Kimble

informative sad fast-paced

4.0

Journalistic account of the efforts to oppose freeway expansion in Houston, Austin, and Dallas. City Limits shows that as bad as CalTrans is, they could be much much worse. TXDOT is the apotheosis of the State Dept of Transportation in the United States, obsessed with automotive traffic flow, mindlessly driven to add lanes to congested freeways like beavers driven to build dams. Highlights the point that environmental regulations like the National Environmental Quality Act (and state-level equivalents, like CEQA) mandate a process, not outcomes, and can even be brushed aside entirely given sufficient political will. Even when the NEPA process is followed, decision-makers can declare that any impacts are worth the benefits of the project they are approving, so long as they acknowledge those impacts. I like the way Kimble introduced the various people who live in the path of the various highway expansions, and show us what their homes (or in one case, school) mean to them. The story about how Escelita de Alma came to move into Richard Linklater's building is funny. This book could have had a lot more about all the topics. For instance it would have been interesting to see more about Cities in Texas's attempts to invest in more public transit, or more about the history and uses of traffic modeling. I could have read more about the transportation history of Dallas too. I was a little surprised that the chapter about Rochester NY didn't mention the Rochester Subway. Pairs well with The Lost Subways of North America.