Confessions of a Recovering Engineer

Much better than his previous book “Strong Towns” because of it's narrower lens on transportation issues in North American cities. Marohn discusses how the engineering profession encultures it's members to develop transportation systems designed exclusively for cars through higher education and financial incentives. In schools, civils engineers don't focus on how streets are places that people live and build community, they are instead taught that streets are places that must move cars quickly and safely. These sorts of engineered streets are wide and have no obstructions which does make for a great environment when you're in the (relative) safety of a multi-ton metal box moving at high speeds, but a terrible place for pedestrians or bikers. Many engineers believe that they're just following the best practices, the “standards and codes” of their profession, but totally dismiss that those same standards result in the injury if not death of thousands each year.

Not only is this design philosophy perpetuated in education, it's also fueled by the financial system behind transportation development. The states and federal government provide grants almost exclusively to incredibly massive transportation projects that involve adding lanes to existing roads and highways or building new ones that oftentimes go nowhere in particular. Engineers accept this system because they get paid regardless (sometimes as a percentage of anticipated cost of the project, which encourages them to rack up more expenses). Cities welcome this system because it gives them new expansion space which they need in order to bring in new tax dollars to pay for the maintenance of old infrastructure that they built on a previous grant from the federal government. This is a constant cycle of debt that's unsustainable.

If you can handle an author that is a little repetitive, quotes himself, and have a vague feeling that our cities could be built differently but don't exactly have the language for what's wrong then I'd recommend this book.