America's Highway Consensus: Its Rise and Fall

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper aims to examine the ways in which America has accommodated automobiles by building roads, especially highways. Automobiles require roads as the most basic infrastructure. Given this, I aim to examine what could be termed as America's highway consensus, uncritical and at times almost blind support for highway building, as a crucial factor that enabled the mass adoption of automobiles in the U.S. In particular, the federal government spent enormous resources and money to build roads and highways as public goods. I thus intend to examine the role and actions of the federal government in building roads and highways as one of the core elements that shaped and enacted highway consensus and led to widespread automobility in the U.S. I first present a brief overview of the early agitations for road building before the federal involvement as well as the changes in culture and outlook that paved the way for the automobile's claim for roads. It is followed by the historical examination of some of the major federal supports for highway building as well as their characteristics. I then examine how they eventually coalesced into the establishment of the Interstate and Defense Highway Act in 1956, the most expensive and extensive highway bill ever. Finally, I also examine how highway building came under attack and how highway consensus began unraveling during the 1960s and after.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. Introduction
• Ⅱ. Clamoring for Roads
• Ⅲ. Road Building Before World War II
• Ⅳ. The Creation of the Interstate Highway System
• Ⅴ. Consensus Unraveled
• Ⅵ. Conclusion
• Works Cited
• Abstract