‘Road to Sprawl: The Intercounty Connector & the Limits of Mobility, Development and Land Preservation’ Presentation Will Be Available Starting Monday, July 31

The history behind the plan and building of the Inter-County Connector is the focus of a free online presentation from Montgomery History that will be available for a one-week period starting Monday, July 31. John Spiers, a visiting assistant history professor at Boston College, will lead “Road to Sprawl: The Intercounty Connector and the Limits of Mobility, Development and Land Preservation.”

Throughout his career, Dr. Spiers has presented looks at the histories of how communities throughout the U.S. have evolved. In 2011, one of his presentations at the Montgomery County History Conference was “The Long and Winding Road: A History of the Intercounty Connector, 1950-2006.”

Suburban communities have spent a lot of time dealing with sprawl, said Dr. Spiers, but he states that they keep making the same choices that got them there in the first place. Focusing on the case of the Intercounty Connector, he discusses how efforts were made to support public participation and environmental review for the highway, but ultimately, the highway’s creation was an attempt to build the way out of congestion without modifying underlying land use policies to support compact growth.

He further states that recent proposals to expand I-270, the Capital Beltway and other major thoroughfares reaffirm that auto-based transportation limit the possibilities for local development and land preservation.

To view the presentation starting July 31, go to » WATCH (montgomeryhistory.org).