ABSTRACT
Transportation planning was a primary feature of urban planning almost everywhere in the twentieth century, a feature that often was given the highest priority. For professional planners, urban residents, and historians of planning, transportation planning requires careful examination of many important elements. In other words, it functions as a very big window through which to view the present and the past. Transportation planning commonly involves conceptualization of the spatial and topographical layout of cities; the functional relationship between sites of housing, industry, commerce, and culture; and the economic impact of planned changes. For historians, therefore, Boston's transportation planning can perhaps function as a paradigm, a theoretical and methodological model that provides a good window through which to consider vital dimensions of urban planning and urban history. Another factor that has always complicated Boston transportation planning is the topography of the city. Boston was founded on a rather small peninsula bordered by the waters of the Atlantic and the Charles River.
