Critical Planning

People cannot be economically mobile if they are not able to be mobile. People cannot access employment, healthcare, or education if they cannot get there. Transportation policy and decision-making has been dominated by white, male, able-bodied, cisgender engineers (Frisch, 2002; Lowe, 2021). As a result, many of the decisions made by transportation policymakers lack the grounding in racial justice or the life experiences of the most vulnerable users (Barajas, 2021; Frisch, 2002; Lowe, 2021; Lowe et al., 2023; Vigar, 2017). In City Limits, Megan Kimble aims to pull back the curtain on transportation decision-making and the effects of those decisions as she takes the reader through the journey of how a highway gets built and who it violently destroys in the process. Divided into three sections, City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways, uses three Texas cities and freeways as case studies to detail the fight for and against Houston’s I-45, Austin’s I-35, and Dallas’ I-345 through the eyes of several community members, elected officials, government staff, small businesses, and community organizations.