{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593443780?tag=bookfrontier-20","asin":"0593443780","authors":["Megan Kimble"],"book_id":"9780593443781","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/city-limits-0593443780","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780593443781.jpg?v=20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh%3A2026-04-17T20%3A41%3A17Z","description":"An eye-opening investigation into how our ever-expanding urban highways accelerated inequality and fractured communities—and a call for a more just, sustainable path forward “Megan Kimble manages to turn a book about transportation and infrastructure into a fascinating human drama.”—Michael Harriot, New York Times bestselling author of Black AF History Every major American city has a highway tearing through its center. Seventy years ago, planners sold these highways as progress, essential to our future prosperity. The automobile promised freedom, and highways were going to take us there. Instead, they divided cities, displaced people from their homes, chained us to our cars, and locked us into a high-emissions future. And the more highways we built, the worse traffic got. Nowhere is this more visible than in Texas. In Houston, Dallas, and Austin, residents and activists are fighting against massive, multi-billion-dollar highway expansions that will claim thousands of homes and businesses, entrenching segregation and sprawl. In City Limits , journalist Megan Kimble weaves together the origins of urban highways with the stories of ordinary people impacted by our failed transportation system. In Austin, hundreds of families will lose child care if a preschool is demolished to expand Interstate 35. In Houston, a young Black woman will lose her brand-new home to a new lane on Interstate 10—just blocks away from where a seventy-four-year-old nurse lost her home in the 1960s when that same highway was built. And in Dallas, an urban planner has improbably found himself at the center of a national conversation about highway removal. What if, instead of building our aging roads wider and higher, we removed those highways altogether? It’s been done before, first in San Francisco and, more recently, in Rochester, where Kimble traces how highway removal has brought new life to a divided city. With propulsive storytelling and ground-level reporting, City Limits exposes the enormous social and environmental costs wrought by our allegiance to a life of increasing speed and dispersion, and brings to light the people who are fighting for a more sustainable, connected future.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9780593443781","publication_date":"20240402","publisher":"Crown","slug":"city-limits","subtitle":"Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways","title":"City Limits"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"SOC026030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Urban Life","score":0.7707,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"TEC009160","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Transport Engineering","score":0.7384,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POL040040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Local Government","score":0.7277,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"SOC026030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Urban Life","score":0.7707,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"TEC009160","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Transport Engineering","score":0.7384,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POL040040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Local Government","score":0.7277,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"POL002000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Cities & Urban Planning","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"SOC072000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Activism & Social Justice","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"TEC009140","confidence_band":"high","label":"Highway & Traffic Engineering","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"Urban Life","score":0.7707,"slug":"urban-life"},{"label":"Transport Engineering","score":0.7384,"slug":"transport-engineering"},{"label":"Local Government","score":0.7277,"slug":"local-government"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers who enjoy Urban Life","Good for readers interested in politics","Good for readers who enjoy Urban Life and Transport Engineering."],"related_lists":[{"intro":"Books that explain how social platforms scale, degrade, and fail, from the attention economy and algorithmic amplification to the governance gaps that leave billions exposed when the infrastructure buckles.","slug":"cultural-currents-social-media-outage-and-platform-resilience","title":"Why Platforms Break","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/lists/cultural-currents-social-media-outage-and-platform-resilience"}],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Edward Glaeser","David Cutler","Edward L. Glaeser"],"book_id":"9780593297704","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780593297704.jpg?v=20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh%3A2026-04-17T20%3A41%3A17Z","score":15.4708,"title":"Survival of the City","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780593297704"},{"authors":["Michelle Wilde Anderson"],"book_id":"9781501195990","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781501195990.jpg?v=20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh%3A2026-04-17T20%3A41%3A17Z","score":15.1567,"title":"The Fight to Save the Town","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781501195990"},{"authors":["Sara C. Bronin"],"book_id":"9780393881660","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780393881660.jpg?v=20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh%3A2026-04-17T20%3A41%3A17Z","score":12.7683,"title":"Key to the City","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780393881660"},{"authors":["Susan Engelking"],"book_id":"9781642796827","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781642796827.jpg?v=20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh%3A2026-04-17T20%3A41%3A17Z","score":12.7124,"title":"Tiny Transit","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781642796827"},{"authors":["Patrick J. Carr","Maria J. Kefalas"],"book_id":"9780807006146","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780807006146.jpg?v=20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh%3A2026-04-17T20%3A41%3A17Z","score":12.6556,"title":"Hollowing Out the Middle","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780807006146"},{"authors":["Stephen Goldsmith","Neil Kleiman"],"book_id":"9780815732860","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780815732860.jpg?v=20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh%3A2026-04-17T20%3A41%3A17Z","score":12.6131,"title":"A New City O/s","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780815732860"},{"authors":["Lynn Peterson","Elizabeth Doerr","Janette Sadik-Khan","& 0 more"],"book_id":"9781642832235","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781642832235.jpg?v=20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh%3A2026-04-17T20%3A41%3A17Z","score":12.4652,"title":"Roadways for People","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781642832235"},{"authors":["Ari Fliakos","Yoni Appelbaum","Random House Audio","& 0 more"],"book_id":"9780593449295","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780593449295.jpg?v=20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh%3A2026-04-17T20%3A41%3A17Z","score":12.3609,"title":"Stuck","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780593449295"}],"topics":[{"evidence_refs":["keyword:social justice"],"label":"Social","score":0.129,"slug":"social"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:politics"],"label":"Politics","score":0.1054,"slug":"politics"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:civil engineering"],"label":"Civil","score":0.069,"slug":"civil"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:urban planning and development"],"label":"Urban","score":0.0576,"slug":"urban"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:government"],"label":"Government","score":0.0443,"slug":"government"}],"what_you_get":["Themes: Social, Politics, Civil.","Reading lane: Urban Life and Transport Engineering.","Publisher: Crown."]},"llm_signals":null,"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":false,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":0,"goodreads_ratings_count":767,"goodreads_reviews_count":175,"quality_score":0.9106}}