Transportation planning in the United States has undergone a revolution in the past two decades. As recently as the late 1960s, with little citizen participation apart from public hearings on specific routes (Rosener, 1975), technical experts laid out plans for major transportation facilities, and their agency colleagues implemented those plans through standard routines. These routines often included noncontested condemnation and considerable alteration of the physical environment.

The Glenn Anderson Freeway-Transitway (the Century Freeway or 1-105) an Los Angeles County, to cost over two billion dollars, traverses nine cities and the County of Los Angeles. At completion in 1993, the Century Freeway will be seventeen miles long, six lanes wide, contain areas for high occupancy vehicles and for rail transit; it will be landscaped and noise attenuated, and it will be surrounded by thousands of units of housing which are linked to its development.