Land Use and Transportation

Transportation is the key driver of urban form.

Cities have been shaped by roads, highways, railways, and rivers for ages, and in turn reshape these modes.

To borrow from an slogan once used by Portland’s transit agency, TriMet: “how we get there matters.”

Cities — the economic engines of the nation — are profoundly shaped by the forms of transportation by which they are served. From the earliest riverside villages to the great metropoli of the West, cities grow, mature, live, and die by the transportation that serves them and which they in turn serve.

Examples abound, ranging from the critical role of the “head of navigation” for early colonial entrepôts, to the place-making of transit, to the interplay between industrial transportation needs and urban growth. These last two in particular are strong focuses for my research, writing, and photography.