TRANSPORTING AND TRANSFORMING A NATION

Planners increasingly blame transportation for the rapidly decaying inner-city urban environment. The freeway, after all, led to suburban development which has increased the disparity in economic opportunity within metropolitan regions. But transportation is also considered a tool to re-heal the social fabric of the nation's cities. Many social planners are promoting the design of more centralized systems that would reconnect inner-city residents with suburban jobs. The central city would then have a new social "raison d'etre" to unite black and white America. Unfortunately, the combined social and economic forces at work seem to be too large and too well entrenched to be easily transformed by transportation, or any other current planning or policy device. American inner cities and suburbs are, in fact, disconnected. The only hope is that a new relationship can be forged between cities and suburbs that will provide for some reasonable accommodation. Transportation will be useful, but not a controlling mechanism for the development of some form of economic inter-dependency between city and suburbs.

• Corporate Authors:

  University of California, Berkeley

  Institute of Urban and Regional Development
  Berkeley, CA  United States  94720
• Authors:
  • Blakely, E J
• Publication Date: 1993-7

Language

• English

Media Info

• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 15 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Central business districts; Economic factors; Economic impacts; Social factors; Suburbs; Transportation planning; Transportation policy
• Uncontrolled Terms: Inner cities; Separation
• Subject Areas: Economics; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Policy; Public Transportation; Society; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00664415
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: Working Paper 595
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Aug 30 1994 12:00AM