Effects of Transportation Planning on Urban Areas

Abstract

The greatest effects of the Federal Aid highway-oriented policy have been social, economic, and environmental. People have been displaced, neighborhoods have been changed, business patterns have been altered, the air has been polluted, and our cities even look very different—primarily as a result of building urban highways and freeways. A study of a freeway under construction in Akron, OH illustrates some of these effects of highway-oriented transportation planning. This particular freeway, although only partially finished, has had numerous social, economic, environmental effects and if finished will have many more. Some of the effects have either tended to perpetuate or aggravate already existing problems, with the result that the overall quality of life has been impacted thereby.