Flowerdew A. D. J. and Hammond A. (1973) City roads and the environment, Reg. Studies 7, 123–136. Building motorways in cities presents formidable environmental and social problems, is very expensive and attracts severe local and sometimes national opposition. How should these factors be taken into account in planning city roads, and even in deciding whether to have them at all? This was part of the brief given to the Urban Motorways Committee, set up by the Minister of Transport in 1969, whose report, published in July 1972, gave rise to the White Paper “Development and Compensation—Putting People First”. The Committee commissioned four firms of consultants to carry out case studies and this paper describes the methods used in one of them. This study involved the use of cost/benefit analysis to analyse three proposals for road improvements prepared by a local authority but not yet implemented. Environmental and social costs were found to be an important if not always crucial element in the comparison of alternative schemes.