City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways

City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways Megan Kimble

Every major American city has a highway tearing through its center — and most of us in transportation have spent our careers working in their shadow. Megan Kimble traces how urban highways were sold as progress, then delivered displacement, disinvestment, and more traffic. Through on-the-ground reporting from Texas, where billion-dollar expansions are still being pushed through neighborhoods today, she makes the case that the path forward runs through equity, not asphalt.

This conversation will feature Jay Blazek Crossley, Executive Director of Farm & City and anti-freeway advocate. Learn more about Jay below.

For those of us working in planning, mobility, and TDM, this book puts a human face on the systems we work within — and challenges us to ask what it would take to actually change them. Join us on September 2nd for a discussion on the history that shaped our cities and what a more just infrastructure future could look like.

Meet the speakers

Jay Blazek Crossley

Jay Blazek Crossley was born in Whitney, grew up in Montrose, came to Austin for ten years to get two degrees from the University of Texas, moved back to Houston for ten years to work for Houston Tomorrow, and moved back to Austin in 2016. He holds a Masters in Public Affairs from the LBJ School at UT-Austin and the LINE Certificate from the Leadership Institute for Nonprofit Executives at Rice University, and lives in Austin with his wife and son.

Crossley serves on the Austin Transit Partnership Community Advisory Committee, the Capital Area Regional Transit Coordination Committee, the Texas Strategic Highway Safety Plan Stakeholder Committee and several emphasis area teams, and as the Chair of the Board of Safe Streets Austin. He formerly served as a member of the Board of the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, Chair of the Austin Pedestrian Advisory Council, Chair of the Houston-Galveston Area Council Pedestrian-Bicyclist Subcommittee, and many other public service roles.