Freewaytopia: How Freeways Shaped Los Angeles

Paul Haddad

Description

Our Marketing and Publicity Efforts Will Focus On:

Publicity in all major Southern California media outlets, with reviews and/or features expected in the LA Times, Los Angeles Magazine, and other local papers and magazines.

Author appearances on Los Angeles television and radio should include outlets such as KTLA, KCRW and KPCC (Larry Mantle should be a lock).

National outlets to be approached include NPR (Fresh Air), AAA Magazine, Car & Driver, etc.

We will also go out to media outlets with interests in public transportation, automobiles, civil engineering, and even architecture.

Freewaytopia: How Freeways Shaped Los Angeles explores how social, economic, political, and cultural demands created the web of freeways whose very form—futuristic, majestic, and progressive—perfectly exemplifies the City of Angels.

From the Arroyo Seco Parkway, which began construction during the Great Depression, to the Century Freeway, completed in 1993, author Paul Haddad provides an entertaining and thought-provoking history of the 527 miles of roadways that comprise the Los Angeles freeway system.

Each of Los Angeles’s twelve freeways receives its own chapter, and these are supplemented by “Off-Ramps”—sidebars that dish out pithy factoids about Botts’ Dots, SigAlerts, and all matter of freeway lexicon, such as why Southern Californians are the only people in the country who place the word “the” in front of their interstates, as in “the 5,” or “the 101.”

Freewaytopia also explores those routes that never saw the light of day. Imagine superhighways burrowing through Laurel Canyon, tunneling under the Hollywood Sign, or spanning the waters of Santa Monica Bay. With a few more legislative strokes of the pen, you wouldn’t have to imagine them—they’d already exist.

Haddad notably gives voice to those individuals whose lives were inextricably connected—for better or worse—to the city’s freeways: The hundreds of thousands of mostly minority and low-income residents who protested against their displacement as a result of eminent domain. Women engineers who excelled in a man’s field. Elected officials who helped further freeways . . . or stop them dead in their tracks. He pays tribute to the corps of civic and state highway employees whose collective vision, expertise, and dedication created not just the most famous freeway network in the world, but feats of engineering that, at their best, achieve architectural poetry. And let’s not forget the beauty queens—no freeway in Los Angeles ever opened without their royal presence.

Freewaytopia is part colorful lore, part civic and historical critique, and part homage to the most famous freeways in the world.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Each first date refers to the original opening segment of a freeway; the second date refers to a freeway’s completion.

CHAPTER 1

THE ARROYO SECO

State Route 110

(1938-1953)

CHAPTER 2

THE HOLLYWOOD FREEWAY

U.S. Route 101 / State Route 170

(1940-1968)

CHAPTER 3

THE HARBOR FREEWAY

Interstate 110

(1952-1970)

CHAPTER 4

THE GOLDEN STATE FREEWAY

Interstate 5

(1955-1974)

CHAPTER 5

THE FOOTHILL FREEWAY

Interstate 210 / State Route 210

(1955-2007)

CHAPTER 6

THE VENTURA FREEWAY

U.S. Route 101 / State Route 134

(1955-1974)

CHAPTER 7

THE SAN DIEGO FREEWAY

Interstate 405 / Interstate 5

(1957-1969)

CHAPTER 8

THE GLENDALE FREEWAY

State Route 2

(1958-1978)

CHAPTER 9

THE SANTA MONICA FREEWAY

Interstate 10 / State Route 1

(1961-1966)

CHAPTER 10

THE SIMI VALLEY FREEWAY

State Route 118

(1968-1993)

CHAPTER 11

THE MARINA FREEWAY

State Route 90

(1968-1972)

CHAPTER 12

THE CENTURY FREEWAY

Interstate 105

(1993)

 

Sujets

• Sciences appliquées
• Ingénierie
• Sciences appliquées
• Sciences appliquées
• Ingénierie
• Automotive
• Transportation
• Popular Culture
• HISTORY
• Kilotón
• Óxido de carbono (II)
• State
• Automotive industry
• General officer
• General
• United States
• West
• NV
• Local
• HI
• ID
• UT
• MT
• Civil
• CA
• CO
• Los Angeles

Informations

• Publié par: Santa Monica Press
• Date de parution: 13 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781595801265
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1254 Mo

Extrait