The Rule of Choice: Frames and Overflows in the History of New York City Roadway Planning

Abstract

Two episodes of roadway planning in New York City—the 1937 Henry Hudson Parkway construction and the 2018 congestion pricing legislation—show the dangers and productive possibilities that result when planners “frame” problems as to be resolved by the choices of either experts or individual urban residents. Framing planning as a matter of choices is a reductive dualism that ignores the intellectual, material, and networked relationships that “overflow” such narrow conceptions. Planners and advocates seeking to intervene in choice frames, from Jane Jacobs to congestion pricing advocates, have repurposed metaphors, technology, and scale to link individuals with community, mobility with environmentalism, and planning with politics.