Power Moves : : Transportation, Politics, and Development in Houston / / Kyle Shelton.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press Complete eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: Shelton, Kyle,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2021]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (302 p.)

Since World War II, Houston has become a burgeoning, internationally connected metropolis—and a sprawling, car-dependent city. In 1950, it possessed only one highway, the Gulf Freeway, which ran between Houston and Galveston. Today, Houston and Harris County have more than 1,200 miles of highways, and a third major loop is under construction nearly thirty miles out from the historic core. Highways have driven every aspect of Houston’s postwar development, from the physical layout of the city to the political process that has transformed both the transportation network and the balance of power between governing elites and ordinary citizens. Power Moves examines debates around the planning, construction, and use of highway and public transportation systems in Houston. Kyle Shelton shows how Houstonians helped shape the city’s growth by attending city council meetings, writing letters to the highway commission, and protesting the destruction of homes to make way for freeways, which happened in both affluent and low-income neighborhoods. He demonstrates that these assertions of what he terms “infrastructural citizenship” opened up the transportation decision-making process to meaningful input from the public and gave many previously marginalized citizens a more powerful voice in civic affairs. Power Moves also reveals the long-lasting results of choosing highway and auto-based infrastructure over other transit options and the resulting challenges that Houstonians currently face as they grapple with how best to move forward from the consequences and opportunities created by past choices.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Fig. 0.1. Houston Highway and Rail Map with Case Studies Highlighted -- Introduction -- 1 Building a Highway Metropolis: The Origins and Advent of Houston’s Postwar Growth -- 2 Whose Highways? Planning, Politics, and Consequences -- 3 “Only You Can Prevent Another Freeway”: The Harrisburg Freeway and the Struggle to Shape a Neighborhood -- 4 Infrastructural Elections: Transit Referenda in the 1970s -- 5 By Road or by Rail? The 1983 Transit Debate -- 6 The Legacies and Limits of Infrastructural Citizenship -- Conclusion -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index