City Limits

Starred review from January 8, 2024
Journalist Kimble (Unprocessed) sets forth an immersive account of three ongoing “freeway revolts” in Texas cities that aim to block further urban highway expansion. Marshalling decades of evidence, she explains how highways built within cities have destroyed neighborhoods, increased air pollution, exacerbated racial segregation, generated sprawl, siphoned funds from mass transit, and increased traffic congestion despite promising to do the opposite. Focusing on the stories of people whose homes and businesses have been or are in danger of being seized and destroyed via eminent domain for further city highway expansion (including Modesti Cooper, a homeowner who refused to sell as her neighborhood emptied and began to receive whiny postcards from government contractors cajoling her to leave), Kimble tracks the legal and political battles of activist residents in Austin, Dallas, and Houston who have organized in opposition to the powerful Texas Transportation Commission. These groups hope either to compel state and city governments to halt expansion or, better yet, to reimagine their city highways as surface-level boulevards stitching together currently divided neighborhoods. Kimble intersperses these activists’ struggles with snapshots of the “first wave” of freeway revolts that occurred in 1960s New York City; Portland, Ore.; Rochester, N.Y.; and San Francisco. By seamlessly combining an expansive history of urban anti-highway organizing with an intriguing up-close look at present-day Texas politics, Kimble delivers an invigorating window onto American grassroots activism.