Part I: Justice & The Interstates

The Interstate Highway System is an engineering marvel. Its legacy is much more complicated. Below, in conversation with the authors of this series from The Metropole.

It’s too easy to say we can fix our cities

by tearing down the highways that have branded their footprints into the land. It’s too easy to say that the problems that plague our equity efforts and just reform start and stop with roads. However, examining the legacy, and connecting with our history might be the best way to unpack the deeper issues baked into our problem-solving strategies. That’s, to me, the biggest takeaway from Justice and the Interstates.

I was thrilled to spend a few hours talking with most of the authors¹ of the Justice and the Interstates project earlier this year about what we’ve gotten wrong about transportation policy in the United States, what we’re doing right, and what the future could hold for us. Below is our conversation, edited for clarity and length.

So welcome everybody. I'd like to welcome most of the Justice and the Interstates team to this interv…