Acceptably Pleasing: The Urban Advisors and the Struggle to Improve Freeway Design. (September 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Muller, Edward K.
• Is Part Of: Journal of urban history. Volume 40:Number 5(2014:Sep.)
• Page Start: 894
• Page End: 916
• Publication Date: 2014-09
• Subjects: urban freeways -- location and design -- design professionals -- Bureau of Public Roads; Cities and towns -- History -- Periodicals; 909.09732
• DOI: 10.1177/0096144214533297
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0096-1442

Abstract

In the face of rancorous opposition to freeways being blasted into central cities and congressional mandates to reduce noise pollution, enhance safety, and protect parks and historic buildings, federal highway administrator Rex M. Whitton consulted with experts such as landscape architect John Ormsbee Simonds and in 1966 appointed a group of eight design professionals charged with devising guidelines for improving the location and design of urban freeways. Meeting over the course of two years, the Urban Advisors (as Whitton named the group) published an extensive report as a book, The Freeway in the City, edited by Simonds. Their recommendations contributed to a long effort of design reform. Like Simonds's proposals in several consultations on freeway projects, notably for I-66 in suburban Virginia outside Washington, D.C., design improvements were infrequently adopted because of vociferous opposition of highway engineers, additional expenses, and late inclusion in the planning process.