Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

by Jeff Speck

The graphs for Portland are particularly telling, with the highway and real estate lines charting almost exactly opposite one another, like an hourglass on its side. Here’s what happens: In the 1960s, highway construction inflects upward while property values lie flat. In the 1970s, highway construction inflects downward, and property values rise. In the 1980s, highway construction inflects upward and property values fall. Finally, in the 1990s, highway investment inflects downward and property values rise again.5 Again, correlation is not cause, but the researchers could find no other data set that consistently tracked along or against urban property values. Whether American or Canadian, the inner cities with less regional highway investment fared better than those with more. Of course, most of the latter could be found in the United States, where the federal government paid ninety cents on the dollar—versus Canada’s ten cents—for road building.6