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"As a built environment professional and founder of the consultancy practice The Human Ecosystem, Kennedy credits authors such as Erick Guerra, Megan Kimble, and Peter Norton for exposing the troubled history of the U.S. highway system, which generations of transportation officials have built out under the premise that it would bolster local economic development and increase travel speeds. Researchers have challenged both those myths on aggregate,"
""What does [the downtown highway] cost to the local economy?" Kennedy wonders. "How much tax base did that erase from the local municipal coffers? How much does it actually cost to be car dependent? Because we've spent over $11 trillion at the state and federal level over the last several decades strictly on building that kind of monopoly.""
Patrick Kennedy is mapping downtown highway footprints and estimating redevelopment potential across more than two dozen U.S. cities as part of the Atlas of Inner-City Highway Impacts. He plans to expand the project to roughly 150 cities and to equip local advocates to quantify the harms of inner-city highways. He probes how much downtown highways reduced local tax bases and asks what the true costs of car dependency are, noting over $11 trillion spent on highway construction. He credits scholars who exposed the highway system's troubled history and notes researchers have challenged claims that highways boosted local economies or travel speeds.
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