Erick Guerra
Beyond Mobility
Planning Cities for People and Places
There are many examples of communities across the globe working to create a seamless fit between transit and surrounding land uses, retrofit car-oriented suburbs, reclaim surplus or dangerous roadways for other activities, and revitalize neglected urban spaces like abandoned railways in urban centers.
The authors draw on experiences and data from a range of cities and countries around the globe in making the case for moving beyond mobility.
- Copyright year: 2017
Overbuilt
The High Costs and Low Rewards of US Highway Construction
In Overbuilt: The High Costs and Low Rewards of US Highway Construction, transportation planning expert Erick Guerra describes how the US roadway system became overbuilt, how public policy continues to encourage overbuilding, the scale and consequences of overbuilding, and how we can rethink our approach to highway building in the US.
Guerra explains that highway overbuilding stems from the institutions, finance mechanisms, and evaluation metrics developed in the first half of the twentieth century. While more funds are set aside for transit, walking, biking, and beautification, the investment paradigm has not changed. Planners and engineers have not adjusted the tools they use to determine which roads should be built, rebuilt, or widened and why.
Despite having too much roadway, the country is still operating in construction mode, using the same basic approach used to finance and build the interstate system quickly, Guerra states. The interstate was completed more than three decades ago. Overbuilt argues convincingly that it is time to move on.