second-line jazz parade in New Orleans to the occupation of Chicano Park in San

mances of pleasure and protest have refash-ioned the spaces of the freeway into more ‘livable ’ places. Overall, The Folklore of the Freeway offers a provocative account of the cultural history of the freeway in the American city, which interweaves past and present into a compelling narrative that challenges urban scholars to rethink the basic points of refer-ence that have framed the storyline of the freeway revolt. There is much to be com-mended in this book, yet the text is not with-out its shortcomings. For instance, very little attention is devoted to situating the politics of US highway construction within a broader international context. Avila does draw some historical linkages between American highway building and the Haussmannisation of Paris a century earlier, but it would have been far more useful to contextualise the US experience by compar-ing it with other highway projects elsewhere in the world during the second half of the 20th century. Did similar urban struggles over highway infrastructure occur beyond the USA, or was this simply a case of American exceptionalism? How might a comparative urbanist viewpoint complicate Avila’s seemingly coherent narrative? Such questions are unfortunately left unanswered in The Folklore of the Freeway. Of course, a single book cannot be expected to cover everything under the sun, yet even a modest review of the international scene could have helped ‘provincialise ’ the American urban experience. Nevertheless, The Folklore of the Freeway provides a forceful counter-narrative of the freeway revolt that illustrates the devastating effects of infra-structural development in communities of colour without losing sight of the creative expressions of urban life and hope amidst the wreckage of the modernist city