Do highways impact development differently in urban versus rural areas?
Yes. One important difference is that in urban areas, it is relatively rare for a highway project to provide new or substantially improved access to a large geographic area (e.g., an entire county). However, in many rural areas, a new highway may provide access to large tracts of undeveloped land. In fact, a number of projects were developed specifically for this reason. Moreover, in some of the rural cases, non-highway economic development initiatives were intentionally coordinated with the improved highway access. Typically, it takes at least half a decade for such efforts to show significant economic development. As of 2004, The FHWA is monitoring two cases, one in Wisconsin and one in New York, where a substantial highway improvement was recently completed whose purpose is to encourage economic development over a multi-county corridor. Early indications show some promise, but more monitoring and analysis is required to determine the success of the highway improvement in attracting
