Sit in traffic on the way to work and count the decisions that came before your trip. Someone approved the road and decided where housing and businesses could go. A transit agency chose which destinations its buses would reach, and your employer set the hours you need to be there. After enough mornings, none of it looks like a decision. Some of the authors are easy to name. President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956, and four decades later the Federal Highway Administration described the Interstate system as essentially complete. While it was built, families bought homes along it and businesses chose locations beside it. You do not have to share Eisenhower’s vision to live inside it. Asking “Whose future is this?” starts with seeing how much of the present was arranged before we arrived.
