Across the country, grassroots advocates are fighting a David-and-Goliath-style battle against massive, powerful departments of transportation who are attempting to widen highways in their neighborhoods. And in her new book, City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways, Megan Kimble introduces us to the many Davids who are taking on one of the biggest Goliaths of all: the Texas Department of Transportation.
In this extended audio version of our recent interview (excerpts that you can check out here), Kimble unpacks not just why the Lone Star State is uniquely emblematic of the larger movement to re-imagine our cities around people rather than cars, but what’s happened to these projects in the months since she finished her essential book — and what advocates in states without a visible freeway fighting contingent can do to galvanize their neighbors.