Departments

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transportation

  • SOURCE: Slate
    3/30/2023

    How Paris Kicked out the Cars

    Planners and politicians used post-WWII prosperity to remake Paris for cars, making it one of the most car-saturated big cities. Recent changes led by Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo have show what can happen when priority is given to air quality and public space (though not every Parisian agrees). 

  • SOURCE: NextCity
    3/10/2023

    Houston's Highway History Teaches Planners What Not to Do

    by Kyle Shelton

    Transportation planners have begun to collect the opinions of community residents affected by proposed highway projects, but they have yet to begin to meaningfully incorporate those concerns into planning. Doing so could prevent repeating the blighting effects of urban transporation projects.

  • 2/26/2023

    What Airports Can Tell Us About Histories of Regional Development

    by Eric Porter

    From the perspective of travelers, airports appear as generic "non-places." But for people who aren't just passing through—entrepreneurs, activists, and especially workers—their particularity makes them sites of struggle that shape the life of a region. Historians have much to learn from them, too. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    1/19/2023

    The Romance of the Highway Obscures Harm to Communities of Color

    by Ryan Reft

    Secretary Pete Buttigieg's comments that interstate construction entrenched racial segregation were denounced as "woke" by critics. But history shows that highway planners knew that such consequences were likely to ensue, and proceeded anyway. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    6/2/2022

    The Ideology of the Bicycle

    The bicycle since its invention has found itself at the center of debates about who public space is for. 

  • 11/7/2021

    Tom Standage on his Brief History of Motion

    by James Thornton Harris

    Author Tom Standage discusses his history of personal transportation, the future of private automobile ownership, and the power of technology as a driver of history.

  • SOURCE: The Metropole
    4/5/2021

    The Myth And The Truth About Interstate Highways

    by Sarah Jo Peterson

    A historian with experience in transportation planning takes a close look at the way that canonical texts in the highway planning field have erased the politics of road building and the way that the interstate highway system was always tied to urban land use planning and urban renewal. 

  • SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
    8/5/2020

    The Forgotten History of How Accessible Design Reshaped the Streets

    Long before the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 mandated curb cuts at all street corners, 30 years ago this summer, disabled people had pointed to the design of the street as a key locus of their political rights — the sidewalk that stands for being in public space, and therefore in the public sphere.

  • SOURCE: The Metropole
    4/22/2020

    Justice In Movement

    by Genevieve Carpio

    History should challenge us to think about transportation not only in terms of moving people, but of distributing the costs and benefits of mobility equitably.