Highways to Hell

 

It is not surprising that those in charge of determining pathways to expanding the Interstate Highway and state highway systems have to face cost barriers. To some, it makes common sense to plot the exercise of eminent domain against less expensive properties. The Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution allows the government to take private lands for public use upon the payment of “just compensation.” Eminent domain. But people are displaced, often unable to fight for a proper valuation because of legal costs, and “progress” is often declared the victor. The losers? Well, life is hard.

You are unlikely to see planners determine that new freeways should push through San Francisco’s Jackson Heights, Los Angeles’ Beverly Hills or Manhattan’s mid-town residential districts. But when you examine where both Interstate and major state highways have been placed, an ugly pattern emerges. Those on the lower rungs of the income ladder tend to be the big losers. Minority neighborhoods are ripped apart, divided and sacrificed in the name of urban renewal and growing transportation needs. According to a 2010 survey, approximately eleven and a half million people, disproportionately racial and ethnic minorities, live within 500 feet of a major highway. Bad air added to poverty and breaking the linkage within a minority neighborhood. 

Increasingly, we are discovering that the history of the United States, beginning with slavery and followed by massive and continuous waves of immigration by ethnic and racial minorities, seems to be defined by consistent and persistent racism. Some overt, like continuing to pay tribute to politicians and soldiers who fought to maintain slavery – do Germans still revere statutes of Nazi “heroes”? – who represent the losing side of the Civil War… defied under an innocuous and self-righteous set of terms like stopping “cancel culture” or “critical race theory.” Others are more subtle yet still hiding in plain view like voter suppression and nullification… or feeding on those least able to protect themselves from government bullying. 

And so it is with our infrastructure. As Congress now considers the expansion and repair of our nation’s infrastructure, it becomes relevant to address how eminent domain, governmental taking, has been so fiercely predicted on racial imbalance. Writing for the July 6th FastCompany.com, Elissaveta M. Brandon, explains:

“When Interstate 244 rammed through Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood in the 1970s, the community had already experienced the wrath of racism. In 1921, a white mob had unleashed horrific violence against the Black neighborhood, killing 300 people and destroying 35 acres of commercial and residential property. Then in the 1930s, redlining policies in Oklahoma’s highly segregated second-largest city had made it impossible for Black Tulsans to own property in the only part of town they could live… By the late 1960s, the area was declared ‘blighted’ and targeted for demolition in the name of ‘urban renewal.’ Five decades after it had been wrecked, Greenwood was wrecked again.

“The story of I-244 and its disastrous effects on a community is one that’s repeated across the country, as Black and brown neighborhoods were ravaged to make space for highways in the ’60s and ’70s. Now, many of those highways are nearing the end of their lifespans. A new report identifies 15 of the worst offenders and advocates for their removal, which would alleviate pollution, spur economic development, and dismantle a tool that has long been used to perpetuate racial segregation…

“The Freeways Without Futures report was published by the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), an organization that advocates for walkable cities, and it comes in the midst of President Biden’s infrastructure plan rollout, which calls for a $20 billion fund to reconnect neighborhoods cut off by old transportation projects. Some of these, like I-10 in New Orleans and I-81 in Syracuse, New York, are included in the report.

“In Oklahoma, Tulsa’s Young Professionals Urbanist Crew—created through an initiative of the Tulsa Regional Chamber to attract and retain young, creative talent—has now put forth a proposal to tear down I-244, which is one of the highways listed in the report, and rebuild the street grid that predated it. The proposal seeks to right decades of racist planning, but is still in its infancy. In other cities, highway removal has been a part of the conversation for years.

“In the Black neighborhood of Tremé in New Orleans, Claiborne Avenue once boasted a grassy median lined with century-old oak trees and over 120 Black-owned businesses. When bulldozers came to clear the land for the construction of I-10 in 1966, they destroyed a landmark public space that was central to the neighborhood’s Black community, and doomed its thriving business corridor, where property values rapidly diminished and the number of businesses fell to only 35 in 2010.

“The Claiborne Expressway was designed for a lifespan of 40 years, and at more than a decade past that, the structure is crumbling, and the pollution from it has been linked to higher rates of asthma, other lung diseases, and heart disease. Discussions about removing ‘the monster’ (as locals call it) go back over a decade, but fears of gentrification, exacerbated by what happened in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, have complicated the process. Residents have been conditioned to expect a neighborhood’s revitalization to lead to increased housing prices and displacement… ‘It’s rooted in those years of gentrification rushing in and poor and Black people being pushed out,’ says urbanist Amy Stelly, who lives a block and half from the highway and believes it’s possible to improve the community without pushing out long-time residents.”

When government acts, when it redefines how and where people can live, where affordable living is replaced with upscale construction, sometimes the long-term hard dollar and social costs, not readily apparent when the initial decisions are made, need to be made more visible, because sooner or later, those costs will rear their ugly heads in so many ways.

I’m Peter Dekom, and too often we lose sight of what is supposed to be the American form of democracy: majority rule while protecting minority interests.