Power Moves: Transportation, Politics, and Development in Houston by Kyle Shelton (review)

Kyle Shelton’s study of transportation in Houston, Texas, touches on important elements of urban history, including politics; demographics, race, and class; geography and environment; public policy; and most importantly, transportation and mobility. The book explores and compares specific moments in Houston’s development of roads and public transit from the mid-1950s through the 2010s. The result is a longitudinal study of urban transportation that documents significant changes in policy, politics, and technology.

The book’s five substantive chapters follow individual episodes in transportation development in Houston. The first tracks planning and initial construction of Houston’s expressways during the 1950s and 1960s. Houston’s efforts resembled those of other cities, where state and municipal engineers and business leaders (real estate developers in Houston) dominated highway planning. Shelton shows the elite’s main motive was Houston’s continued economic growth and regional domination; local residents were not part of the conversation. Two road projects illustrate Shelton’s point, one in the white suburbs and another in a minority urban neighborhood. Neither group could alter the chosen routes, but African-American neighborhoods paid a much higher price. Shelton shows, however, that citizens throughout Houston learned from these initial skirmishes. By the mid-1960s, many residents pressed for a voice in transportation decision-making, engaging in what Shelton labels infrastructural citizenship. The second chapter presents a case study of citizen involvement, as individuals in a Hispanic neighborhood stopped construction of the Harrisburg Freeway through their community.

My one criticism is that Shelton could have examined the federal Bureau of Public Roads’ role in Houston’s highway planning and construction efforts. Shelton shows that Texas highway department engineers were involved, but the views of BPR engineers mattered. They had to approve any project using interstate funding. And Shelton notes in passing that changing federal stances on urban expressway routes and environmental impact statements help explain shifts in Houston’s highway politics after 1965. Bringing federal officials into the narrative likely would have added to Shelton’s history.

The next two chapters examine how public transit came to Houston. Shelton explores the politics behind a failed referendum in the mid-1970s and a successful campaign to fund transit in 1978. Minority voters allied with certain white suburban dwellers spearheaded the first plan’s defeat, while the same voters carried the second to a successful conclusion. The difference is explained by the transit agency’s decision to seek public input after the initial failure. In a major step for Houston, the agency paid attention to black and brown residents, and was rewarded. This public policy landscape differed markedly from the top-down structure responsible for Houston’s highways during the 1950s and 1960s.

The fourth chapter details competition in the 1980s between a heavy-rail transit system and new toll roads across metropolitan Houston. The political landscape was shifting again, with the emergence of regional political fragmentation. Within a period of months, a ballot proposal on transit failed while a plan for toll expressways passed. This outcome not only launched another road-building boom, but also shattered the coalition that shaped transit policy during the 1970s. White suburbs generally rejected transit programs they saw as primarily benefitting urban neighborhoods, and which also might encourage minority residents to move into their enclaves.

A final chapter examines expansion of the city’s light-rail system across Houston after 2000, especially the protracted struggle to lengthen the Green Line. Tracing lengthy debates about the line’s location, Shelton demonstrates the limits of infrastructural citizenship. He shows that the transit agency clearly consulted residents, but could not, in the end implement the preferences of local residents.

Shelton’s study of infrastructure politics across time is important. It bridges a gap in urban and technological history, linking politics and technology. He shows how urban politics in Houston changed from totally top-down to more democratic, and finally to the geographic, racial, and socio-economic fragmentation of...