Rejuvenating the area could bring prosperity, but also gentrification, pricing current residents out of their homes. The interstate traffic must go somewhere, potentially to nearby communities. In a zero-sum game, there are winners and losers. But what’s clear is that many residents in each of these neighborhoods are working to ensure the same harm doesn't come to their communities. The future of what lies ahead in each community - whether it’s highway removal or neighborhood revitalization - varies and, for many, remains uncertain. And the highway, tearing it down, can’t become an excuse for doing it either.” “We can’t be guilty a third time of displacing people,” said Khalid Bey, who is running for mayor in Syracuse, referring to past urban renewal projects. In an April interview with The Grio, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the highway system was built in ways that embedded racist principles, and the $20 billion in Biden’s budget proposal contains funding to stitch some of these neighborhoods back together.īut the practical implication of that remains unclear. The pollution from the multiple highway interchanges has severely damaged the air quality in the neighborhood, and residents want sound-blocking walls, and better air filtration in schools and buildings. In Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights neighborhood, a vast maze of highways took the place of beloved family homes and cut many Latino residents off from their schools, churches and one another.But many longtime residents are so concerned that the removal will lead to gentrification that they don’t want it torn down. President Joe Biden cited the removal of the expressway as part of his goal of addressing “historic inequities” within infrastructure. In New Orleans, bustling Black-owned businesses in the Tremé section closed one by one as the Claiborne Expressway’s gray cement pillars replaced stately white oaks that had lined the avenue.New York state has committed $800 million to the first phase of the highway’s removal beginning next year, to be replaced by a walkable and bikeable “community grid.” But residents are deeply concerned about displacement, gentrification, and the negative impact on other areas. In Syracuse, New York, the 15th Ward, home to many Black residents, disappeared under the shadows and smog of Interstate 81.Of more than 50 interstate highways across the country nearing the end of their life span, NBC News examined three urban neighborhoods that show the range of proposals underway to redress the harms caused by the construction of interstates. But in many cases, those plans are reopening old wounds and leading to protracted debates that politicians and engineers are struggling to solve. Now, as many of these hulking structures reach obsolescence, the federal government and many states and cities are belatedly recognizing the harm they caused, and are working with communities to design alternatives that repair the damage. From 1957 to 1977, the program displaced over 475,000 households and 1 million people, according to the U.S. What has changed decades after the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 brought 41,000 miles of interstates to the country is the recognition of the harm that was done to communities left in the shade of these now-aging roadways. “Everything we needed was in our neighborhood,” said Barbara Lacen-Keller, 75, a lifelong resident of Tremé, a once bustling New Orleans community that Interstate 10 cut through in the 1960s. Whether through blindness or design, the mid-century American interstate highway program demolished homes and bisected communities, driven by the promise of prosperity, faster commutes and jobs. By Suzanne Gamboa, Phil McCausland, Josh Lederman and Ben Popkenĭuring the largest public works program ever attempted in the United States, Black and Latino communities in cities across the country met the blade of the bulldozer and the crush of the wrecking ball, making room for ribbons of new highway.
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