A Tale of Two Visions: Harland Bartholomew, Robert Moses, and the Development of the American Freeway

For sixty years, engineers and planners have debated the freeway’s role in the city. Engineers have tended to view freeways strictly in traffic service terms. Planners, on the other hand, have long viewed freeways not only as a means of facilitating automobile transportation but also as a tool for reshaping the city. This paper uses the plans of Harland Bartholomew and Robert Moses to illustrate these competing visions of the freeway. In the end, the traffic-service vision of the engineers emerged victorious as a result of state and federal highway finance decisions, and this victory has carried with it a high price for many American cities.