Off to Portland

Thank you for your Portland lecture. It was excellent.

One comment please. While the decisions to build our early 20th century highways were in fact largely influenced by the “oil/motor/highway engineer gang”, they were also influenced by the desire to alleviate real urban problems resulting from “too much density”. You showed “before and after” pictures” for some intersections. A “before and after picture of some early 20th century residential/industrial slum areas would have been of value. For some decision makers, sprawl was seen as a way to correct a health and welfare problem by allowing people and industry to simply “spread out”.