Oklahoma City swaps highway for park

Tear it down. Build a park.

The aging Crosstown Expressway — an elevated 4.5-mile stretch of Interstate 40 — will be demolished in 2012. An old-fashioned boulevard and a mile-long park will be constructed in its place.

Oklahoma City is doing what many cities dream about: saying goodbye to a highway.

More than a dozen cities have proposals to remove highways from downtowns. Cleveland wants to remove a freeway that blocks its waterfront. Syracuse, N.Y., wants to rid itself of an interstate that cuts the city in half.

From the Urban Studies Program at UPenn: "In his talk, Harvey will draw on his recent book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), in which he traces the rise of neoliberal principles based on the theory of free markets and unfettered international capital flows from an obscure economic theory to dominance on the world stage. Harvey shows how proponents of a neoliberal economic philosophy, such as the influential leaders Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, gained the consensus of key figures and economic and political institutions, driven by an aspiration to re-establish class power. He dissects the logic of neoliberalism, revealing its built-in contradictions and the tremendous variation in how it looks from place to place and at different scales. He will talk about how cities have both complied and resisted neoliberalism's discipline."

Lecture begins 00:06:35. Lecture ends and questions begin 01:25:55. Audio goes bad around 01:34:00.

(from cover page)The Index to Current Urban Documents makes available complete and detailed bibliographic descriptions of the majority  of the local government documents issued annually by the largest cities and counties in the United States and Canada. With the cooperation and assistance of local government officials, public libraries, municipal reference libraries and major research libraries, the program attempts to catalog and index documents issued by 286 of the larger cities and their counties and regions." Copies of the documents themselves can be found in the accompanying microfilm collection in the Government Documents room.

Most useful for documents from 1972-late 90's, but other documents are included. Each volume includes two indexes: a geographical index and a subject index.