Road history : planning, building and use

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This collection of essays on 'Road History' is the result of a workshop co-organized by the Mobility History Group within the Tensions of Europe research program and the COST 340 network, both sponsored by European research funds. They reflect the increasing interest among both historians of technology and historians of transport, mobility and tourism in national and transnational road construction history as a part of understanding wider issues of national and international politics. To that end, internationally recognized road historians have combined their analytical energy with that of historians in both the United States and Europe to produce this collection of papers. The topics are wide-ranging ; moreover, it is the first time that several of these contributors have been published in English.

These essays constitute one of the first attempts to consider the history of highway development in Europe as opposed to the much-better researched history of roads in the United States. The authors adopt comparative methods and place special emphasis upon the politics of highway construction programs. In doing so, they highlight such pressing issues as the relationship between central control of large national construction programs on the one hand and the role of regional and local governance, especially municipal officials, on the other. The contributors also stress the importance of the road as an icon of modernity, adopted by engineering and planning experts to enhance their largely technocratic discourses and practices, Thus, interesting differences with the American story are exposed, including the role of tourism as an argument underlying highway construction and the preference of road improvements (straightening, widening, repaving) over the construction of totally new roads.