Engineering Nature, Igniting Risk: LA’s Fires and a Century of Landscape Manipulation

May 27, 2025.Reading time 45 minutes.

Editor’s note: In anticipation of what we all believe will be a stellar UHA conference this October 9-12 in Los Angeles, we are featuring Los Angeles as our theme this month. This is our fifth post; you can see others from this month as they are published as well as past pieces on the city […]

Justice and the Interstates: A Proposal for a National Project of Truth and Accountability

April 28, 2021.Reading time 11 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the eighth and final post in a series of articles during April that examine the construction of the Interstate Highway System over the past seven decades. The series, titled Justice and the Interstates, opens up new areas for historical inquiry, while also calling on policy makers and the transportation and urban […]

The perils of participation

April 26, 2021.Reading time 21 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the seventh in a series of articles during April that examine the construction of the Interstate Highway System over the past seven decades. The series, titled Justice and the Interstates, opens up new areas for historical inquiry, while also calling on policy makers and the transportation and urban planning professions to […]

Remembering Sweet Auburn Before the Expressway: What Nostalgia Reveals About the Limits of Postwar Liberalism

April 14, 2021.Reading time 30 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of articles during April that examine the construction of the Interstate Highway System over the past seven decades. The series, titled Justice and the Interstates, opens up new areas for historical inquiry, while also calling on policy makers and the transportation and urban planning professions to […]

Harnessing the Memory of Freeway Displacement in the Cream City

April 12, 2021.Reading time 22 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of articles during April that examine the construction of the Interstate Highway System over the past seven decades. The series, titled Justice and the Interstates, opens up new areas for historical inquiry, while also calling on policy makers and the transportation and urban planning professions to […]

The Interstates: Planned Violence and the Need for Truth and Reconciliation

April 7, 2021.Reading time 21 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of articles during April that examine the construction of the Interstate Highway System over the past seven decades. The series, titled Justice and the Interstates, opens up new areas for historical inquiry, while also calling on policy makers and the transportation and urban planning professions to […]

The Infrastructure of Movement: Moving the City, an Overview and Bibliography for Urban Transit History

April 2, 2020.Reading time 33 minutes.

It would be hard to overstate the importance of infrastructure in the lives of Americans. In the nineteenth century, Henry Clay viewed the construction of transportation infrastructure – largely roads and canals – as a means to bind the nation’s communities together as one nation. Abraham Lincoln advocated for much the same. In the twentieth […]

The Metropole

Tag: highways