Contemporary Urban Planning by John M. Levy

Author:John M. Levy [John M. Levy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781317213826
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Transportation Planning and Land Use

Land use and transportation planning are very much a chicken and egg situation. In the short term, land use shapes the demand for transportation. Many a highway has been built because population or commercial growth produced

congestion and delays that generated political pressures to deal with the situation. On the other hand, the provision of roads changes land values and thus alters the intensity with which land is used, and, with that outcome, alters the entire pattern of land use. The Interstate Highway System, to take the largest example, was designed to facilitate movement of vehicles from one existing urban center to another, something it does very successfully. However, it has also done a great deal to reshape urban areas, an effect that was not one of the motivations behind its construction (see Figure 12–1). Beyond that, it has reshaped the balance between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas in the United States by making formerly isolated rural areas far more accessible than they had been. In fact, it is believed that much of the movement of manufacturing activity out of metropolitan areas and into rural areas occurred for just this reason. Thus the system has had a major impact on the economies of both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas.

Figure 12–1 The Interstate Highway System with its ring road, or “beltway,” design creates masses of highly accessible land outside the city, particularly where radial routes coming out of the city intersect the beltway. Though not intended in that way, this feature of the system has been a powerful force for moving people and jobs out of the central city.

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