Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Politics and International Relations

Reader 1

Professor Thomas Kim

Reader 2

Professor Nikos Constant

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2026 Naïma R van Tyn

Abstract

Infrastructure debates across the United States increasingly unfold as battles over meaning, where the language used to describe projects can shape their ultimate fate. This thesis examines how discursive power drove the divergent outcomes of two major urban freeway expansion projects: the Central 70 Project in Denver, Colorado, and the I-710 South Corridor Project in Los Angeles, California. Both projects proposed widening freeways through historically marginalized communities and generated years of intense political conflict, yet one was built while the other was abandoned. Drawing on Steven Lukes' three-dimensional theory of power and John Gaventa's expansion of third-dimensional analysis, and employing Qualitative Discourse Analysis of newspaper coverage spanning 2000 to 2021, this study maps the discursive landscapes of both projects across three discursive framing categories: Development Legitimization, Social and Material Harm, and Governance and Procedure. Pro-expansion actors in both cities deployed urgency, traffic, economic growth, and progress frames to construct highway development as necessary and common sense. Anti-expansion actors countered with environmental justice, community health, and historical harm narratives through different discursive strategies with markedly different levels of success. In conjunction, these cases add to the scholarly conversation around how discourse plays a role in the creation and prevention of freeway expansion projects and point to strategies to navigate the enduring hegemony of car-centered development.

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