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Book Cover
E-book
Author Shelton, Kyle, 1985- author.

Title Power moves : transportation, politics, and development in Houston / Kyle Shelton
Edition First edition
Published Austin : University of Texas Press, 2017

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Building a highway metropolis : the origins and advent of Houston's postwar growth -- Whose highways? : planning, politics, and consequences -- "Only you can prevent another freeway" : the Harrisburg freeway and the struggle to shape a neighborhood -- Infrastructural elections : transit referenda in the 1970s -- By road or by rail? : the 1983 transit debate -- The legacies and limits of infrastructural citizenship
Summary 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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Transportation -- Texas -- Houston -- History
Transportation and state -- Texas -- Houston
City planning -- Texas -- Houston -- Citizen participation
City planning -- Citizen participation.
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Industries -- Transportation.
TRANSPORTATION -- Public Transportation.
HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Southwest (AZ, NM, OK, TX)
City planning -- Citizen participation
Transportation
Transportation and state
Texas -- Houston
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781477314661
1477314660
9781477314678
1477314679