Student: Jesse Simpson
Graduation date: May 2017
Type: Concentration (single major)
Date approved: November 2014
Go to concentration landing page
Summary
Transportation infrastructure has dramatically altered the form of cities. Whereas the extent of cities before the mid-nineteenth century was limited by the distance one could comfortably walk, (Jackson 1985) the invention of rail-based transit in the nineteenth century opened up the hinterlands to rapid, transit-oriented development (Jackson 1985; Black 1995). The invention of the automobile and the highway transformed cities once again, enabling massive peripheral growth of car-centered landscapes. (Lewis 1997) Despite these technological elements of transportation, we should not forget the political underpinnings of the system; both railroads and highways were constructed with substantial public subsidy, (Rose et al. 2006) and how these infrastructure subsidies are targeted is an inherently political matter. There is also a politics contained within the geography of transportation infrastructure; where infrastructure is placed (and who decides this) can have huge effects on urban development, (Black 1995) the mobility of the city as a whole, (Ladd 2011) and quality of life within neighborhoods, (Fein 2014) and is thus politically contested. Issues of race and class rise to the fore upon examination of these political planning structures and their choices, especially when we consider which localities have historically seen disruptive construction of transportation infrastructure (Bullard et al. 2004; Biles et al. 2014) While contemporary transportation planning tends to be more sensitive of local contexts, (Lowe 2014) this consideration can lead to highly fractured debates and a glacially-slow political process.
Contemporary issues around transportation politics in developed nations can be placed within a context of general deindustrialization and an uneven rise of a post-industrial service and high-tech economy. (Hamnett 2000) The material side of this deindustrialization is a major driving force of gentrification; the spatial vacuums left behind are frequently foci for urban transformation. Waterfront industries are turned into luxury condominiums, warehouses are converted into lofts, and (industrial) working-class neighborhoods become trendy. (Smith and Williams 1986) Gentrification has attracted a wealth of scholarship, with a plethora of disagreements over its cause and effect. Some have emphasized the production-side capital disinvestment and subsequent profitable reinvestment while others have stressed a consumer-side rise in urban aesthetic values, with additional debates over the net effects of gentrification. (Slater 2011) Transportation plays an important (though by no means complete) role in this process of gentrification, with transit infrastructure directing the flow of gentrification; it is associated with both capital investment in urban infill real-estate and urban aesthetics, as part of the urbanist livability package. (Pollack et al. 2010) Additionally, gentrifying cities generate their own unique transportation politics, characterized by competing notions of “green” urbanism and social justice. Since gentrification is most prevalent in cities with a substantial pre-automobile urban form, which are seeing growth of the service and high-tech sectors, (Hamnett 2000) it is closely associated with the transit-rich and pedestrian-friendly areas that urbanists champion as the environmental-responsible alternative to suburban sprawl. At the same time, displacement, and its associated loss of “authenticity” is widely recognized as a bad thing. Even attempts to reconcile urbanism and social justice can be problematic, given a landscape of gentrification. Cities seeking to simultaneously expand transit usage for ecological reasons and promote social equity may deliberately build infrastructure through traditionally poorer neighborhoods, in order to promote mobility and provide greater economic opportunity. The realization of urbanist goals, however, requires that the infrastructure catalyzes denser development, and thus some degree of displacement, whether directly or via rising rents.
Biles, Roger, Raymond A. Mohl, and Mark H. Rose. 2014. “Revisiting the Urban Interstates: Politics, Policy, and Culture since World War II.” Journal of Urban History 40 (5): 827–30.
Black, Alan. 1995. Urban Mass Transportation Planning. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Bullard, Robert Doyle, Glenn Steve Johnson, and Angel O. Torres. 2004. Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism & New Routes to Equity. South End Press.
Fein, Michael R. 2014. “Realignment Highways and Livability Policy in the Post-Interstate Era, 1978–2013.” Journal of Urban History 40 (5): 855–69.
Hamnett, Chris. 2000. “Gentrification, Postindustrialism, and Industrial and Occupational Restructuring in Global Cities.” In A Companion to the City, edited by Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson, 331-338. Oxford: Blackwell.
Jackson, Kenneth T. 1987. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. 1st edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ladd, Brian. 2011. “Cities on Wheels: Cars and Public Space.” In The New Blackwell Companion to the City, edited by Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson, 265-274. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Lowe, Kate. 2014. “Bypassing Equity? Transit Investment and Regional Transportation Planning.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 34 (1): 30–44.
Mohl, Raymond A., and Mark H. Rose. 2012. “The Post-Interstate Era Planning, Politics, and Policy since the 1970s.” Journal of Planning History 11 (1): 3–7.
Pollack, Stephanie, Barry Bluestone, and Chase Billingham. 2010. “Maintaining Diversity in America’s Transit-Rich Neighborhoods.” A Report Prepared by the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University.
Rose, Mark H., Bruce E. Seely, and Paul F. Barrett. 2010. The Best Transportation System in the World: Railroads, Trucks, Airlines, and American Public Policy in the Twentieth Century. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Smith, Neil, and Peter Williams. 1986. Gentrification of the City. Boston: Unwin Hyman.
Slater, Tom. 2011. “Gentrification of the City.” In The New Blackwell Companion to the City, edited by Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson, 265-274. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Questions
- Descriptive: What effects does transportation infrastructure have on communities? What development patterns are associated with various transportation forms? What local resistance to new highways or rail lines has arisen?
- Explanatory: How have cities decided where to place transportation infrastructure? How do agencies decide on what form(s) of transportation to invest in? To what extent is this process subject to quantification? Why does local resistance to new transportation infrastructure emerge?
- Evaluative: What are the positive and negative social effects of transportation investment? To what extent does transportation infrastructure contribute to development and gentrification? How does investment in highways or transit lines affect people’s transportation mode choices?
- Instrumental: How should local constituencies be involved in the transportation planning process? What types of transportation investment should agencies prioritize, given their limited funding? Where should cities concentrate development, in relation to their transportation infrastructures?
Concentration courses
- ECON 332 (Urban Economics, 4 credits), fall 2016. An examination of economic aspects of cities, including land use, regional politics and an evaluation of the merits of alternative policies.
- SOAN 282 (Pacific Rim Cities, 4 credits), spring 2016. Study of urban life in Pacific Rim Cities and the social, economic, and political linkages between Portland and the Pacific Rim.
- ENVS 499 (Independent Study, 4 credits), fall 2016. Independent research into the cultural and political forces at play in the development of a particular transportation project.
- SOAN 222 (City and Society, 4 credits), spring 2017. Study of the main approaches and empirical problems in cities, dealing with the ordering, re-structuring, transformation, and contestation of cities and urban space.
Arts and humanities courses
- HIST 261 (Global Environmental History, 4 credits). Pre-approved A&H course; no justification required.
- HIST 239 (Constructing the American Landscape, 4 credits), spring 2017. An examination of the forces that have shaped the American built environment, including transportation, gentrification, and ideologies.