I'm 27 and I definitely can see this racism. Even as a child I always noticed how the expressways/highways always went directly through the black neighborhoods and some exits and entrances to the expressway were even on residential streets, but in white or suburban areas the expressways as well as its exits/ entrances were always leading to shopping, restaurants, or just other commercial buildings that were meant to bring commerce to those communities. As a kid I remember wondering why expressways were made this way. Once I learned about red lining and white flight I understood why expressways were built this way, but that doesn't mean it's right. America loves to forget about the wrongs done to the black community and somehow those things done supposedly helped black people when we were worse afterwards than before. When our communities tried to become self sustaining because other communities did not want business with us, they built an expressway directly through our most connected and prosperous communities or burned our communities to the ground and then flooded them out and they become lakes for tourists. I believe that's part of America's bad mojo, every other community can come here and build something to be proud of but for blacks, most of whose ancestors built much of this country's wealth with blood, sweat, and tears with little to no compensation might I add, it's so much harder, not impossible just harder.
Very thoughtful response queen! Foundational Black Americans blood, sweat, & many tears are the foundation of America. Once we are truly recognized, the truth will come out & WE will be compensated for our ancestors struggle & triumph. All we strive for is recognition for our hard work to this country.
I live in Atlanta, and due to a myriad of reasons it is becoming less and less Black. It's always interesting to hear White people who have moved into historic Black neighborhoods complain about the location of the interstate, and the weird lack of sound barriers. The sound barriers exist, but somehow stop at the borders of Atlanta especially in historical Black neighborhoods. If only this kind of in your face systemic problems could also educate people who vote against their self interests...
It's especially hard (and meanspirited) when the people in one's own government (that you pay taxes into) are the ones actively and sometimes even openly impeding your progress.
Don’t get us Angelenos started on highways. There’s a reason there’s no highway through Beverly Hills and we’re still fighting to get a subway line to the valley under Bel Air
Los Angeles is the STUPIDEST and MOST MORONIC area when it comes to ground-based transportation; two very efficient rail systems moved people a helluva lot better than the "Hitler strips" the area later went insane constructing....
That's also one of the reasons why you don't see any stores and restaurants owned by Asians in white neighborhoods. White people didn't want them there. They could only open stores in Black neighborhoods because those were the only loans they could get, while we couldn't even get loans to open stories in our own neighborhoods.
Good luck with that. They might finish the Central Valley part and some of of the SoCal part, but the State will never acquire the property they need in The Bay 😂
I grew up in the New York City area in the 50s/60s/70s and got to see the results of Robert Moses' highway planning handiwork first-hand. Thanks for covering that piece of work so thoroughly.
I know here in Rochester, NY, the inner loop around downtown ended up have a multitude of problems. Not only did it destroy neighborhoods (that again were predominantly black) it ended up destroying downtown when all the businesses fled to the suburbs anyway. They've been struggling to revitalize downtown for decades at this point. They finally broke the loop and filled in some of it to create green space and build up the area around the Strong National Museum of Play. It was so frustrating to realize that by the time they finished building the innerloop, it was no longer needed, and the very communities it disrupted or destroyed were the ones that would have helped keep downtown vibrant and vital.
In Detroit, they placed I-75 right thru the black business community called "Black Bottom." My grandfather owned a business there. We never saw the benefit of this business nor was there any talk from my Dad nor none of my family about this situation until today.
Tucson has one, too. It is functional, but is mostly empty. Connecting the Air Force base with downtown, an unneeded path, of course it cut through traditional Latino neighborhoods.
I know what people who are not from here are referring to when they call it the “highway to nowhere” but I don’t hear anyone from here call it that, we call it the “underpass on 40 going downtown” lol
@ Lol have you seen Los Angeles? That giant thoroughfare causes so much traffic that cars can hardly move. It’s the same in many more ‘developed’ cities
Exactly. They built so many roads that they now obstruct each other. It's time to reduce roads and road widths and reconnect communities so that less people need to drive in the first place.
In Australia, we have the pacific highway that built on old indigenous tracks. In northern NSW and Southern QLD, they were built on the tracks made by the old people on their way to the Bunya festival. Every couple of years, the Bunya pines would drop ENORMOUS fruit along the coast, and people from various mobs and countries would trek their way to Bunjalung country. There, they would feast and trade news of what was happening in the surrounding countries. To my knowledge, the original festival is gone, but folks have tried to recreate it, I just don't know much about that. But if you drive on the Pacific highway, north of New South Wales and South of Queensland, you'll still Bunya pines. The same ones the old people planted to collect fruit and guide them towards the Bunya festival.
Another very important inspiration for American was the Interstate was the Autobahn in Germany that was built during WWII, Hitler himself ordered the construction of the route during the Great Depression
You work for 42yrs to have $2m in your retirement, Meanwhile some people are putting just $20k in a meme coin for just few months and now they are multi millionaires I pray that anyone who reads this will be successful in life
Well explain thank you for bringing up this video Financial education is indeed required for more than 80% of the society in the country as very few are literate on the subject. The value of the US🇺🇲 dollar is declining due to inflation, but it is increasing in comparison to other currencies and commodities such as gold and real estate. I'm worried that rising inflation will cause my 550k in my retirement funds to lose value, But with the help of Mrs Angela Leo I hit 220k this week from my investment of 45k, I am truly grateful for all the knowledge and nuggets you have given me over the past few months.
A quote about racism in highway planning during the ‘50s (not sure who said this) was that there were just 35,000 black people in the entire state of Minnesota, but the highway department managed to find them.
We are in the same page😂 Shot out to PBS for going so hard for REAL American history. The ONLY channel that doesn’t make you feel like a bipolar, paranoid weirdo by pushing apple pie and Christopher Columbus and “post-racial “ rhetoric. Someone really tried to convince me that racism is over because of Obama. I joked and said that racism is BACK because of Obama😂…..we know that is only partially true. It is not Obama’s fault America is still in racist denial. We didn’t realize a Black President would lead to a facist takeover, and the orange man on the cover of Time magazine. I am still glad he (Obama) made it to the WH….we needed the image of that man as President…even if it is only a hologram of hope, today.
Speaking of Austin Texas, when I-35 went through town, it most negatively affected the black neighborhoods. Now, when I lived in east Austin back in the late 1970s I had a white neighbor who lost the house she and her husband lived in and they got pushed further into Black Land (named for the dirt not the people.) But most of the people were black.
@@mrlofi333 That depends on the "they" you're talking about. Who you align yourself with is more along the lines of the point I was making. Obviously Trump cultists and neo nazis don't want to live in an equitable society, but I'd never be addressing them in the first place.
Eisenhower was impressed with the German Autobahn So he wanted the same super highways and the Eisenhower interstate system, Now as for Robert Moses he the reason why the Brooklyn Dodgers left Brooklyn Because Walter O Maley wanted to build a new stadium to replace Ebbets Field He wanted to build it on Atlantic Ave and Fulton St right at the terminus on the LIRR and all major subway lines. Robert Moses said the Dodgers can move to Flushing Meadows, Walter O Maley said we are the Brooklyn Dodgers not the Queen's Dodgers And met with West Coast officials and Chavez Ravene was available and the rest is history. He moved the team to LA
An urban planner snd engineer friend of mine would say "No. Highways are inanimate. They cant be racist." We got into it about maps. So many NYC maps, esp. tourist maps, ignore Manhattan above 125th Street, and even if they show Harlem, don't include the many tourist sites. And the Bronx? It might as well not exist. Even on the map/brochure of the NY Botanical Garden, the only place you'll find "Bronx" is in the Directions and Map for the "Bronx River Parkway."
You should show your friend a map of Earth, and let him try to deny that one. Inanimate objects are made by racist creators…like…wha? Your boy is gaslighting you. So annoying.
They did this in Canada in the 60s to Africville which was an historic Black community that formed after Underground Railroad. The city of Halifax, Nova Scotia decided to build a highway and park and uproot this Black community and displace their people into mostly government housing. Those people lost their homes that they owned.
when i lived on the south side of chicago i learned how devastating the placement of highways were to our communities. I grew up on Long Island and my family migrated from the Bronx/Harlem area in 1950s to Long Island. I wonder how much the Cross Bronx Expressway impacted their decision to relocate
Remember that at this time gasoline still had lead in it, which can been causally linked to very serious health issues (including increased aggression from the brain damage lead causes, which has generational add-on effects)
Watching this as a road expansion project is in my city is actively creating a massive gash in a lower-income neighborhood with multi-generational families living within them. The houses were painted so colorfully and the families were always nice to see while traveling home. 😢
This is one of those things that I knew that there was something bigger to it when I was younger, but I didn't know how to prove it. Then, you grow and you're affirmed by the things you can read and watch. I know displacement by highway happened and is still happening in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (one of the most segregated cities in America, please read up!) but to know that close to 1 million people countrywide were displaced is chilling. I mean where are they? America rarely has to deal with its harms, because it's constantly harming on such a large and rapid scale. Thank you Felicia for the Win for disseminating this information in a digestible way, but also putting scale in perspective. I think the gravity of the harm caused to Black and Latino/Hispanic communities in this country is so overwhelming it makes it hard to process it inside or out of it.
This is what happens when you build your national economy & national identity on the exploitation & denigration of Those People (Black people, Chinese immigrants, prison slavery, you name it).
Sadly it's the reason the United States doesn't have Universal Healthcare too. There was a time when the US was about to implement Universal Healthcare but racist eugenicists thought that if we didn't give healthcare to black people then they'd die off over time and the US would be a fully-white nation. It's repulsive. It's waaaay past time to demolish urban freeways, give Universal Healthcare, and ban Exclusionary Zoning.
I remember that. I was a kid when I first saw it. I distinctively remember the way Toontown was segregated. What a trip. 👀 The “hatman” turning out to be a “toon” was pretty deep to me, too…even back then. Loved that movie! Good one!
I’ve never spent any time there, but I’ve flown in and out of DFW a few times and passing over the developed areas - OMG what you said looks absolutely true!
This is how funding for that project works. After the bill was passed the Fed allocated money to the states. Because who knows best were to put a highway? The states do! Well, the states don't. They rely on the county and city governments to determine the most feasible route to take. The city governments all around the US were not too keen on putting highways through their own neighborhoods and the neighborhoods of their constituents. At the time the people in power we overwhelmingly white. Through generations of institutionalized discrimination (a subject to vast to get into...), the highway had to go somewhere and the places with the least resistance were and still are the minority owned parts of town. City leadship was not defending their representation to negotiate with the Fed through the city and county governments. Instead they were forced to fight for their voices to be heard. The system was rigged. Meetings about land redevelopment were never placed in minority areas because the people who maintained power didn't want them to interfere. They were the path of least resistance by choice of the city, county and state leadership (in that order, blame the cities government at the time... Really) I live in KC and 75% of the proposed back highway system was developed. Starting back in 1945 there were plans to build what we see today. Some didn't make the cut as it cut through influencial parts of town that banned together to fight. There is documentation between the KCMO and the state of MO about other proposed locations. That were dismissed due to complexity. It wasn't complex it was easier to condemn land in areas where the people had no voice to fight back. Their voice smothered by the political machine built on discrimination. There are stories of neighborhoods fighting back and winning. Many of these are buried deep in city and county archives... The Fed took notice and stepped in. There are also cases of highways being placed in the best of the worst locations with no location being truly "good". That's the thing about government. It's politcal. I know I work in mine and get to see and hear these talks almost weekly. Bias and discrimination it hasn't gone, just less visible and harder to justify; harder to get backing from my local leadership. We have policy in our city we have leaders that truly represent their communities (for the most part...). And that leadership wants to improve. It just sucks that sometimes someone has to be on the receiving end of that "improvement".
I don't know the solution to fix this, it's a sad legacy we leave for our children. We were discussing this recently, it left me feeling disrespected. I love the presentation, done with class. Your preparation was Very evident! Thank you.
One "solution" would be PRIVATIZING the interstate stuperhighways; that way, only motorists and vehicle fleet owners will pay taxes on that ownership, leaving the wallets of those without motor vehicles alone.
I stopped watching the video because it's 😂🤣🤣 I can't even take it seriously. Haha. 😅 Racist highways. I'm still here for the comments though. I'm entertaining myself while waiting on my phone to charge
@@CandiceMMartinezyou didn’t watch it. The people who designed the freeways’ placement were being racist in where they chose to build them. But you just laugh and laugh without knowing what was said. Maybe if you laugh derisively at enough people, systemic racism will just disappear.
Gotta say, I think one thing we could be doing is creating more mass transit too. Obviously a company that MAKES CARS would want as many private automobiles on the road as possible, and of course that was the primary motivation for GM's Futurama, but the reality is - mass transit is so much better for the environment and often it's more efficient too (when it's built correctly and supported with an eye to success). Where I live - small city in the US South - it has taken the city twenty YEARS to build up a "fleet" of five whole buses. That's it, that's all the mass transit we get. There's not even a cab company. There are perhaps a half dozen services for disabled patients who need non-emergency medical transport (ie, poor folks needing to go to dialysis and the like), but even with something like that, we tolerated having just ONE such service for decades. It's insane, and is an enormous red flag showing how racism still affects the city, no matter what the public stance supposedly is. But a functional - even ROBUST - bus system would mean that way more folks could make it to work without needing to worry about their car (a boon in a state where if you happen to have a vehicle at all, you don't qualify for food stamps, no matter WHAT your income is). Folks who CAN get to work WILL work, because no one actually wants to live hand-to-mouth if they can help it. I also think putting more money into the roads in general - for maintaining them better, for making changes that help reduce those negative impacts (like adding barrier walls and trees and such to help reduce noise) - would help, because doing more work on them would create more jobs (at least one would hope).
@@CraigFThompson I mean, it'd be nice: but please recall that US rail has been yanking OUT lines and running fewer trains for decades. And something on rails for inside a city requires all new stuff, making another obstacle in the road to progress. (puns intended) Whereas in my state at least, we have a mini-industry around "shuttle bus" usage. (No idea if the things are also made here, though I doubt it.) But the casinos use a TON of the things, some of them are hybrid, and when they're "retired" from casinos, some of the cities buy them up, refurbish them a bit and give 'em a municipal coat of paint. My city has SIX of these now, where there used to be one and it was broken half the time. School buses could be refurb'd too. We HAVE those, and they would do as a measure while we fight for cleaner mass transit.
Just think, we could've had a national railway that didn't destroy Black and Brown neighborhoods while also being better for the environment, cheaper, and safer than driving. Somehow, Henry Ford is responsible for this...
It was GM’s Alfred P. Sloan who primary destroyed the nation’s passenger rail, with the illegal sabotaging of city lines from Baltimore to L.A. Atlantic Richfield also was in on the conspiracy.
We did have a national railway though. We had the most extensive rail network the world had ever seen. White people preferred cars so they could pretend black people didn't exist.
Not only Ford, but the entire automotive industry, as well as the energy corporations, as well. Sup'm tells me that the nation would've been a helluva lot better off if Eisenhower had just left Hitler's autobahn in Germany, instead of importing it to the United States....
We had train cities popping up already as well and they allowed automotive lobbyist win over the future welfare of the people. Visiting a country with wide scale public transit really highlights how abysmal our transportation is here. It’s so expensive, wasteful, and bad for the environment to all have to have our own car to get anywhere 😢
Highways are the true definition of what “racist” and “racism” mean. Not what people have watered down the definition to.. People throw that word around for the smallest of things like being observant about culture, making idiotic statements like “black people can be racist” but no one understands the true origin or purpose of that words. These highways personify that origin
It’s not a “new idea” though. Germany built the Autobahn before this and the US just copied it. The only difference is Germany didn’t plow it through neighborhoods.
In fact, Eisenhower originally intended for them to be built just like the autobahn, with on/off ramps becoming minor roads into the cities where they'd then become wide boulevards with intersections and traffic signals, along with NON-AUTOMOTIVE public transportation along that corridor; he also planned for toll booths to be arranged at each state's border, and at ten or twenty mile intervals. He further arranged for special taxes to be collected from motorists and vehicle fleet owners ALONE.... The automotive industry and energy corporations lobbied congress for the disastrous changes we must all now suffer with, including the fact that people owning no motor vehicles whatsoever still must pay their hard-earned tax dollars into a network they cannot directly use.
The entire video is about the intentional destruction of marginalized communities, using "building highways means progress" as an excuse. The entire point. The entire video. The entire idea. If Germany wasn't using highways to demolish "undesirables" then they weren't using the same idea.
In Stockton California they bulldozed some historic Filipino buildings to make way for the Crosstown Freeway. The state later acknowledged that they had done wrong and today there is a sign that reads Little Manila as you enter the freeway.
Happening now on Broad River in Columbia, S.C. My people sold a slither of her land and they harassed a family until the moved, a lot of people know the story here. It's just a bad situation and they did not need to touch the highway when the roads are horrid.
These roads have also have had negative impacts in rural areas. I recently saw a video about Route 66 and how many of the towns that were thriving and prosperous when the road was on its heyday are now completely or nearly abandoned because of the interstates bypassing them.
Totally! This was one of the main drivers of _red lining._ The I-35 Austin-San Antonio corridor is one of the best examples of this, *ESPECIALLY* when driving around Austin _proper._ I-35 south ATX corridor (the one facing west Austin) -- lots of skyscrapers, big tech, etc. I-35 north ATXA corridor -- while the inner city portion has been gentrified as all hell, the rest of the east side of Austin ( *especially* the 744 area) is notoriously poor.
That's a very good example. East Austin is the black side of town and of course they put I35 right between downtown and East Austin to keep the black people out of the white areas. And of course TxDOT just decided to widen the segregation wall in the coming years. It's sickening that we haven't learned from our darkest moments.
You missed the point. Video says that highways were build through black neighborhoods. And that does not hold in Austin. It's true that most of East of I-35 is poor but still majority of people living east of I-35 are not black
@@SebastianTysler East Austin was predominantly black when I-35 was built. I-35 was purposefully designed to be difficult to cross in order to keep the black people out of white neighborhoods. They could have routed it around the city but they very intentionally chose to make it a segregation wall.
They did the same here in Jacksonville, building I-95 and the reason why the Skyrail system failed here was cause they didn’t want to connect them to or through the black communities
But Finns at least faced almost no discrimination in relocating to neighborhoods with housing as good for the same or better prices. Jews certainly faced discrimination, but not to the extent that black and brown New Yorkers did during the mid and late 20th century. Highway displacement was a significant theft of housing equity wealth from black and Latino people - which was what Robert Moses and many segregationist developers tight with him intended. Moses was more overtly racist than this video indicates. He blocked the hiring of black construction workers and contractors for the building of the 1964 World’s Fair site.
@@brianarbenz1329 Well said. I can't remember if Moses did this, but some highway planners in the 1950s would purposefully build bridges too short so that buses on the black side of town were unable to pass underneath.
Here from Richmond where I-64 runs above Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground and I-95 displaced black residents in Jackson Ward. This area is where the two highways meet!
I-10 was routed through the Macon community of Tallahasse in the north central part of town, reducing it to a fraction of its former glory, and MOST of the black-owned farm land on the northwestern portion of town.... not an accident.
Many salutations!!! When I first arrived here in San Antonio in May 2001, one of the things that drove me batty are how some of the roadways do not follow a strict north-south and east-west directional alignment as was the case when I was being brought up in Harris County @ TX. Upon arriving in San Antonio from the east, IH-10 then turns north along IH-35 prior to diverging north-northwest?!? What the skull!?! IH-35 runs north and south along the western periphery of downtown San Antonio before diverging east north-east!?! What the brick!?! The last time I checked north-northwest is not west like even-numbered interstate highways are supposed to run. Ditto for east-northeast; like all odd-numbered interstate highways, IH-35 is supposed to run north and south . . . somebody, please reach out to me and explain the rationale behind the aforementioned highway routing. Anyway, as for the topic of this video . . . the decision about where to build the interstate highways are a product of the civic priorities at the time. Capitalism's primary emphasis is the accumulation of capital as its name suggests; unfortunately, it is only after several years that we are having demonstrated that we need to be of much greater prowess in allocating capital as we are at accumulating it. VIA Metropolitan Transit constructed a transit plaza just to the south of my apartment which is nice -- if not for the fact that the County Jail is sitting right to the west as if to say, "We care nothing of whatever »good« choices you think you made for yourself; this will be your end destination." Centro Plaza has several derelict and dilapidated buildings to the northwest that really should be demolished but are not because the VIA leadership feels that they are of historical significance. I am of the emphatic conviction that the adjective "historical" is given a lot more significance than it really deserves. I have been to several iterations of Fiesta San Antonio and every time without fail there are SO MANY cars and it incenses me that this is behaved toward as an inevitable consequence . . . I strongly disagree. I also watch a few urbanism video content and believe that inducing demand for municipal transit is not only possible but necessary. One method to combat the Fiesta San Antonio traffic jam is to lock down every highway egress ramp along the portion of IH-10, IH-35, US-90, and US-281 inside Loop 410 except for the highway-to-highway interchanges and the egresses that lead to VIA transit centers and park-n-rides. By doing this, the civilian motorists find themselves trapped on the highways and over time will see fit to either avail municipal transit or simply not make the trip downtown at all during Fiesta San Antonio. Another method is to physically revise the aforementioned highways to operate as follows: Eastbound IH-10, southbound IH-35: no change except for also prosecuting a concurrency with southbound US-281/IH-37 along the western periphery of the central business district Northbound IH-35: it shall turn east to prosecute a concurrency with eastbound IH-10/US-90 and then north to prosecute a concurrency with northbound US-281/IH-37 along with westbound IH-10 along the eastern periphery of the central business district prior to resuming its east-northeast divergence out of the central business district. Northbound US-281/IH-37: no change except for also prosecuting a concurrency with northbound IH-35 and westbound IH-10 along the eastern periphery of the central business district Westbound IH-10: it shall turn north to prosecute a concurrency with northbound US-281/IH-37 and then west-southwest to prosecute a concurrency with southbound IH-35 prior to resuming its north-northwest divergence out of the central business district. Southbound US-281: it shall turn west southwest to prosecute a concurrency with southbound IH-35 and then east to prosecute a concurrency with eastbound IH-10 prior to resuming its southbound regular course. This method involves physically revising the highways and might not be for the faint of heart; still, physically revising a roadway is effective in making civilian motorists uncomfortable and thus more likely to slow down which makes things safer all around. This requires a hefty dose of civic courage and political will!
There's always going to be little exceptions to the E-W = even / N-S = odd Interstate rules. Usually for roads to get around obstacles, whether it's natural ones like rivers or mountains, or built-up urban areas that couldn't be bulldozed out of the way. The numbers should be viewed for the overall regional/national orientation of the highway, not a guarantee that you'll always be physically traveling the signed direction at any given time. Interstate 10 makes a lengthy southeastward "dip" starting at Junction to reach and serve San Antonio in the first place, which leads to it being nearly N-S in the inner city before turning straight east towards Houston at the junction with I-35/US-90. I-94 in Minnesota's Twin Cities behaves the same way, running straight N-S west of downtown Minneapolis, before turning east towards St. Paul.
One key step is for planners to be accountable to voters in the areas they design. They often hold public forums and ignore public input in favor of the plans they made before inviting public input. Another key is that displaced people should be fairly compensated and relocation should involve the community. If the government builds a highway over your home, they should not be able to condemn the property, allowing them to pay less than market value. In fact the value of each property should be determined by how much it would cost to relocate to a comparable neighborhood in a comparable property. Relocation plans should be in place, and even new buildings built before people are displaced. If people are being asked to sacrifice for public areas, the public is obligated to make sure they land on their feet.
Looking through the comments, hearing tales of the city (Memphis) placing highways through certain communities and not others is evidenced here in Memphis
This is historically what they did to a lot of Black communities. They started with the infrastructure building highways, bridges and roads and business in order to separate and to break up the BLACK communities. They did this to almost every major Black city that had a community. This was basically systematic racism at its best.
Don’t forget about power lines. Even today, when the electric company wants to expand, they don’t look at new subdivisions or wealthy neighborhoods. They aim their sights on trailer parks which house a majority of poor people. They say they can move a trailer some where else. Where? These same people are responsible for zoning where trailer are not allowed. So where do they move them? They don’t. So now they eliminate two eye sores most people don’t even know their area have these zoning restrictions because they are tightly packed into new legislation that no one read.
Sadly, Boston’s West End didn’t survive urban renewal. That wasn’t due to needing the land for highways, so much as developers wanting the land to build high-end apartments and condos, and the city going along because they wanted the increased tax revenue. The West End was working class - and not a slum - known for being ethnically and racially mixed, and had a strong sense of community. Between the mid 1950s and mid 1960s, the residential areas were razed. Realizing they could never afford to live in the new buildings, evicted residents moved wherever they could afford and/or be accepted. There were some who believed it was a conspiracy to dismantle an area that was strongly integrated and cooperative. I don’t think it was that deeply planned out; it was just about greed. But I’m sure those who were strongly racist and classist didn’t complain about the outcome.
Columbus Ohio is like that. I 70 and I 71 form a crosshair and separates the rich from the poor and blacks from whites add SR 315 and 161 added a even more deeper cut by dividing the Northwest (Wealthy areas) from the middle and lower class.
I saw the title and knew they were going to talk about Rondo. Aside from breaking the neighborhood apart, 94 running where it does doesn’t make logical sense. There’s literally incomplete ramps to where it was supposed to intersect with 35 E and 35 W that are overgrown with 50 years of weeds, so you have to get off on a city street, buzz around, and join 94 off a city street on ramp. The planning goes beyond just not caring about Rondo, it literally went out of its way to break it apart.
Up next -> The Disturbing History of America’s Justice System. OR The Disturbing History of America’s Educational System. OR The Disturbing History of America’s Healthcare System. OR The Disturbing History of America’s Housing System And On and On
I have mixed feelings about the racist intentions, too many anomalies, including part of the Cross Bronx. When it was extended eastward to the Throggs Neck bridge, it went through what was, and still is a an affluent neighborhood, within earshot of residential areas, with a large white population. The same can be said for most of the Queens’ portion of the Long Island Expressway.
My Caucasian ex was literally telling me about this a week or so ago. How interstates were never intended to go through neighborhoods but they put them right through all the black neighborhoods that’s why there’s never any close highway entrances in the middle of nowhere where
I'm 27 and I definitely can see this racism. Even as a child I always noticed how the expressways/highways always went directly through the black neighborhoods and some exits and entrances to the expressway were even on residential streets, but in white or suburban areas the expressways as well as its exits/ entrances were always leading to shopping, restaurants, or just other commercial buildings that were meant to bring commerce to those communities. As a kid I remember wondering why expressways were made this way. Once I learned about red lining and white flight I understood why expressways were built this way, but that doesn't mean it's right. America loves to forget about the wrongs done to the black community and somehow those things done supposedly helped black people when we were worse afterwards than before. When our communities tried to become self sustaining because other communities did not want business with us, they built an expressway directly through our most connected and prosperous communities or burned our communities to the ground and then flooded them out and they become lakes for tourists. I believe that's part of America's bad mojo, every other community can come here and build something to be proud of but for blacks, most of whose ancestors built much of this country's wealth with blood, sweat, and tears with little to no compensation might I add, it's so much harder, not impossible just harder.
You are right.
Very thoughtful response queen! Foundational Black Americans blood, sweat, & many tears are the foundation of America. Once we are truly recognized, the truth will come out & WE will be compensated for our ancestors struggle & triumph. All we strive for is recognition for our hard work to this country.
I live in Atlanta, and due to a myriad of reasons it is becoming less and less Black.
It's always interesting to hear White people who have moved into historic Black neighborhoods complain about the location of the interstate, and the weird lack of sound barriers. The sound barriers exist, but somehow stop at the borders of Atlanta especially in historical Black neighborhoods.
If only this kind of in your face systemic problems could also educate people who vote against their self interests...
It's especially hard (and meanspirited) when the people in one's own government (that you pay taxes into) are the ones actively and sometimes even openly impeding your progress.
Comment of the day
Don’t get us Angelenos started on highways. There’s a reason there’s no highway through Beverly Hills and we’re still fighting to get a subway line to the valley under Bel Air
Los Angeles is the STUPIDEST and MOST MORONIC area when it comes to ground-based transportation; two very efficient rail systems moved people a helluva lot better than the "Hitler strips" the area later went insane constructing....
That's also one of the reasons why you don't see any stores and restaurants owned by Asians in white neighborhoods. White people didn't want them there. They could only open stores in Black neighborhoods because those were the only loans they could get, while we couldn't even get loans to open stories in our own neighborhoods.
Good luck with that. They might finish the Central Valley part and some of of the SoCal part, but the State will never acquire the property they need in The Bay 😂
@Rashiedamichelle This is the Los Angeles subway, and NOT the high speed rail line so desperately needed....
@Rashiedamichelle I’m talking city public transit- the state line is a whole different ballgame
I grew up in the New York City area in the 50s/60s/70s and got to see the results of Robert Moses' highway planning handiwork first-hand. Thanks for covering that piece of work so thoroughly.
Read Stanley I. Fischler's "Moving Millions; it clearly explains what happened with Moses and his other ilk....
I came here to say this! Our properties were taken via eminent domain and they weren't all slums.
I grew up in Brooklyn. Old Timers still curse Robert Moses name.
@Nuri989 I'll forever remember when John Lindsay was elected; as soon as he took office, Moses was OUSTED!
@@ThatBronxGuhrlthey did the same for the New Yankee Stadium & Barclay Center in Brooklyn
I know here in Rochester, NY, the inner loop around downtown ended up have a multitude of problems. Not only did it destroy neighborhoods (that again were predominantly black) it ended up destroying downtown when all the businesses fled to the suburbs anyway. They've been struggling to revitalize downtown for decades at this point. They finally broke the loop and filled in some of it to create green space and build up the area around the Strong National Museum of Play. It was so frustrating to realize that by the time they finished building the innerloop, it was no longer needed, and the very communities it disrupted or destroyed were the ones that would have helped keep downtown vibrant and vital.
God don't like ugly 😂😂😂
Having to take the bus to RTA sucks too. Bus routes could be better.
So true I too am from Rochester it is sad. They aided in poverty of black people. By making jobs harder to access
Ain't that something... the things ppl do 😕
Hello from Rochester!
In Detroit, they placed I-75 right thru the black business community called "Black Bottom." My grandfather owned a business there. We never saw the benefit of this business nor was there any talk from my Dad nor none of my family about this situation until today.
I’m Baltimore all day and that’s what we call it “The Highway to Nowhere” It’s ridiculous
And it's in horrible condition too!
Time to fill it back in and reconnect the neighborhood!
Tucson has one, too. It is functional, but is mostly empty. Connecting the Air Force base with downtown, an unneeded path, of course it cut through traditional Latino neighborhoods.
@@mariusfacktor3597easier said than done, UA-cam mayor!
I know what people who are not from here are referring to when they call it the “highway to nowhere” but I don’t hear anyone from here call it that, we call it the “underpass on 40 going downtown” lol
When you centre cars, nothing makes sense: Pedestrian Spaces get worse and confusing while widening roads leads to more traffic.
No. Bigots just suck.
Centering cars made sense for the time. How about you design some infrastructure, and will regroup in 80 years and see if you did the right thing?
@ Lol have you seen Los Angeles? That giant thoroughfare causes so much traffic that cars can hardly move. It’s the same in many more ‘developed’ cities
Exactly. They built so many roads that they now obstruct each other. It's time to reduce roads and road widths and reconnect communities so that less people need to drive in the first place.
@@BradThePittsBrad. You're not smart. Stay silent in the future.
In Australia, we have the pacific highway that built on old indigenous tracks. In northern NSW and Southern QLD, they were built on the tracks made by the old people on their way to the Bunya festival. Every couple of years, the Bunya pines would drop ENORMOUS fruit along the coast, and people from various mobs and countries would trek their way to Bunjalung country. There, they would feast and trade news of what was happening in the surrounding countries. To my knowledge, the original festival is gone, but folks have tried to recreate it, I just don't know much about that. But if you drive on the Pacific highway, north of New South Wales and South of Queensland, you'll still Bunya pines. The same ones the old people planted to collect fruit and guide them towards the Bunya festival.
Another very important inspiration for American was the Interstate was the Autobahn in Germany that was built during WWII, Hitler himself ordered the construction of the route during the Great Depression
@@Voucher765 Californian living in Germany and you are absolutely correct
@@prettycyber8332 Yup and that was Eisenhower's idea
Absolutely. Black neighborhoods and businesses in Richmond were shuttered to make way for I-95.
1000000000%
Happened in several cities in multiple states across the country!
Shuttered?
@@Maxx-w9b Forcibly closed
@@Jiddy12345 Still way too sterile, try stolen and destroyed
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A quote about racism in highway planning during the ‘50s (not sure who said this) was that there were just 35,000 black people in the entire state of Minnesota, but the highway department managed to find them.
Damn.
Huh! Hmph! Typical! Well then! Problem is nobody takes it seriously to care that America was built with fatality flawed leaks
Without watching, YES.
We are in the same page😂
Shot out to PBS for going so hard for REAL American history. The ONLY channel that doesn’t make you feel like a bipolar, paranoid weirdo by pushing apple pie and Christopher Columbus and “post-racial “ rhetoric. Someone really tried to convince me that racism is over because of Obama. I joked and said that racism is BACK because of Obama😂…..we know that is only partially true. It is not Obama’s fault America is still in racist denial. We didn’t realize a Black President would lead to a facist takeover, and the orange man on the cover of Time magazine. I am still glad he (Obama) made it to the WH….we needed the image of that man as President…even if it is only a hologram of hope, today.
Haiku thesis approved
Speaking of Austin Texas, when I-35 went through town, it most negatively affected the black neighborhoods. Now, when I lived in east Austin back in the late 1970s I had a white neighbor who lost the house she and her husband lived in and they got pushed further into Black Land (named for the dirt not the people.) But most of the people were black.
Facts. We can’t change the past but we sure can LEARN from it and must make corrections to have a more equitable present.
We ? They know the past and they don’t plan to make any change
@@mrlofi333 That depends on the "they" you're talking about. Who you align yourself with is more along the lines of the point I was making. Obviously Trump cultists and neo nazis don't want to live in an equitable society, but I'd never be addressing them in the first place.
@@mrlofi333You need to change.
It’s not the highways, it’s the people who plan the highways!
Obviously. It’s just a clever way to say it.
thanks, captain obvious
So if they designed it with racism in mind, the highway is racist. Just like ALL of Joanne rowlings books are transphobic.
The thumbnail shows "are highways racist?" Fault the content poster not the comment poster.
Eisenhower was impressed with the German Autobahn
So he wanted the same super highways and the Eisenhower interstate system,
Now as for Robert Moses he the reason why the Brooklyn Dodgers left Brooklyn
Because Walter O Maley wanted to build a new stadium to replace Ebbets Field
He wanted to build it on Atlantic Ave and Fulton St right at the terminus on the LIRR and all major subway lines.
Robert Moses said the Dodgers can move to Flushing Meadows, Walter O Maley said we are the Brooklyn Dodgers not the Queen's Dodgers
And met with West Coast officials and Chavez Ravene was available and the rest is history.
He moved the team to LA
An urban planner snd engineer friend of mine would say "No. Highways are inanimate. They cant be racist." We got into it about maps. So many NYC maps, esp. tourist maps, ignore Manhattan above 125th Street, and even if they show Harlem, don't include the many tourist sites. And the Bronx? It might as well not exist. Even on the map/brochure of the NY Botanical Garden, the only place you'll find "Bronx" is in the Directions and Map for the "Bronx River Parkway."
You should show your friend a map of Earth, and let him try to deny that one. Inanimate objects are made by racist creators…like…wha? Your boy is gaslighting you. So annoying.
In Charlotte NC they did the same. The Panthers stadium sits where the Black hospital once was.
and people try saying white privilege isnt real
Not privilege but POWER!
White Affirmative Action was definitely real! And still is most of the time.
@@lessconfused5179it’s definitely both
@@mrlofi333I've aged about 19379 years in the 20 years since awakening to Amerikka's failed experiments😮💨
I didn't get the memo when they were passing out the privilege cards, must've been at work
Now it make sense why people say railroads & highways divide different parts of the city 🤔🤷🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️
However, railroads divide cities in a much less destructive manner....
They did this in Canada in the 60s to Africville which was an historic Black community that formed after Underground Railroad. The city of Halifax, Nova Scotia decided to build a highway and park and uproot this Black community and displace their people into mostly government housing. Those people lost their homes that they owned.
Happened in Vancouver as well
They were and still are looking to the South for policy advice.
when i lived on the south side of chicago i learned how devastating the placement of highways were to our communities. I grew up on Long Island and my family migrated from the Bronx/Harlem area in 1950s to Long Island. I wonder how much the Cross Bronx Expressway impacted their decision to relocate
I've always wanted to visit Long Island but now only because rappers tend to refer to it as NYC's 6th borough, etc.
Remember that at this time gasoline still had lead in it, which can been causally linked to very serious health issues (including increased aggression from the brain damage lead causes, which has generational add-on effects)
Watching this as a road expansion project is in my city is actively creating a massive gash in a lower-income neighborhood with multi-generational families living within them. The houses were painted so colorfully and the families were always nice to see while traveling home. 😢
I-35 in Austin…yep! I learned about the story and was shocked
This is one of those things that I knew that there was something bigger to it when I was younger, but I didn't know how to prove it. Then, you grow and you're affirmed by the things you can read and watch. I know displacement by highway happened and is still happening in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (one of the most segregated cities in America, please read up!) but to know that close to 1 million people countrywide were displaced is chilling. I mean where are they? America rarely has to deal with its harms, because it's constantly harming on such a large and rapid scale. Thank you Felicia for the Win for disseminating this information in a digestible way, but also putting scale in perspective. I think the gravity of the harm caused to Black and Latino/Hispanic communities in this country is so overwhelming it makes it hard to process it inside or out of it.
They tore down black rock in Detroit which was a black neighborhood to build i375 and davison freeway
The question really starts to become what *_isn't_* racist. 😕
True. Redline the neighborhoods to keep certain people in and then later destroy those neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.
Yes. It's all systemic.
white racism is the core foundation of this America. This type of cruelty is woven within the fiber of everything in America.
This is what happens when you build your national economy & national identity on the exploitation & denigration of Those People (Black people, Chinese immigrants, prison slavery, you name it).
Racism White Supremacy is Global, so almost everything besides nature.
Southside of Chicago was literally split in half due to imminent domain.
You can ask this question about any infrastructure or institution in the United States and the answer is yes.
Last year I was planning a trip to DC and noticed the city limits form a perfect square - except the VA corner. I googled why and... racism, again. 🤷🏾
Where else is the answer always no?
Sadly it's the reason the United States doesn't have Universal Healthcare too. There was a time when the US was about to implement Universal Healthcare but racist eugenicists thought that if we didn't give healthcare to black people then they'd die off over time and the US would be a fully-white nation. It's repulsive. It's waaaay past time to demolish urban freeways, give Universal Healthcare, and ban Exclusionary Zoning.
@@coreyrobinson8209parts of Maryland surrounding DC as well- most believe Baltimore is worstcase scenario- they'd be wrong
These sorts of practices were the inspiration for who framed roger rabbit
The Polanski film Chinatown also.
I remember that. I was a kid when I first saw it. I distinctively remember the way Toontown was segregated. What a trip. 👀
The “hatman” turning out to be a “toon” was pretty deep to me, too…even back then. Loved that movie! Good one!
Thank you for bringing this topic to light
This video is Dallas-Fort Worth. A giant sprawling parking lot of 8+ million people.
I’ve never spent any time there, but I’ve flown in and out of DFW a few times and passing over the developed areas - OMG what you said looks absolutely true!
I didn't even know anything about this. Oh my gosh.
The 605 freeway completely paved over the Mexican-American community known as Jim Town in Whittier.
@@hotbecky880707 and Dodger Stadium displaced an entire Mexican-American community.
And the beat goes on.
Fantastic video! Very well made. Question, where can I find the sources used in this video (both primary and secondary sources)?
Can't answer where they got their information from but I know 'the color of law' covers a good amount of what they covered in this video
Houston, Texas. The majority of highways in Houston just destroyed the city. Houston is already car-centric so progress is incredibly slow.
Learning about the " Green Book" was heart breaking 😢
I95 going through the Jackson Ward neighborhood of Richmond VA
Yep! Displaced my dad and his family. They lived at what is now the Convention Center
YES THEY ARE
This is how funding for that project works. After the bill was passed the Fed allocated money to the states. Because who knows best were to put a highway? The states do! Well, the states don't. They rely on the county and city governments to determine the most feasible route to take. The city governments all around the US were not too keen on putting highways through their own neighborhoods and the neighborhoods of their constituents. At the time the people in power we overwhelmingly white. Through generations of institutionalized discrimination (a subject to vast to get into...), the highway had to go somewhere and the places with the least resistance were and still are the minority owned parts of town. City leadship was not defending their representation to negotiate with the Fed through the city and county governments. Instead they were forced to fight for their voices to be heard. The system was rigged. Meetings about land redevelopment were never placed in minority areas because the people who maintained power didn't want them to interfere. They were the path of least resistance by choice of the city, county and state leadership (in that order, blame the cities government at the time... Really)
I live in KC and 75% of the proposed back highway system was developed. Starting back in 1945 there were plans to build what we see today. Some didn't make the cut as it cut through influencial parts of town that banned together to fight. There is documentation between the KCMO and the state of MO about other proposed locations. That were dismissed due to complexity. It wasn't complex it was easier to condemn land in areas where the people had no voice to fight back. Their voice smothered by the political machine built on discrimination. There are stories of neighborhoods fighting back and winning. Many of these are buried deep in city and county archives... The Fed took notice and stepped in. There are also cases of highways being placed in the best of the worst locations with no location being truly "good".
That's the thing about government. It's politcal. I know I work in mine and get to see and hear these talks almost weekly. Bias and discrimination it hasn't gone, just less visible and harder to justify; harder to get backing from my local leadership. We have policy in our city we have leaders that truly represent their communities (for the most part...). And that leadership wants to improve. It just sucks that sometimes someone has to be on the receiving end of that "improvement".
Thank you for speaking on this issue.
Same happened I Cincinnati Ohio for i275 and i74
Great video, Felicia For The Win!! You got the "W" with this information. Thanks. Peace
So tired of black people saying black and brown. The brown people have never ever spoken up for Black people. Wake up
THIS!! The impact and history of Jim Crow has been against Black people.
Right
Thank you jeez ain’t no brown people in 1950s like that
FACTS!
💯 I'm so tired of this 'people of color' label designed to dilute Black.
Specifically knowing the history of Detroit pretty well, I would say absolutely
I have only been aware of this, because of Chaco Canyon, and the seizure of land to build Dodgers Stadium.
I don't know the solution to fix this, it's a sad legacy we leave for our children. We were discussing this recently, it left me feeling disrespected. I love the presentation, done with class. Your preparation was Very evident! Thank you.
One "solution" would be PRIVATIZING the interstate stuperhighways; that way, only motorists and vehicle fleet owners will pay taxes on that ownership, leaving the wallets of those without motor vehicles alone.
They did the same thing here in Orlando
Hopefully educational videos like this will help fightback the fearmongering of 15 minute cities being even discussed. Less highways & food deserts
I stopped watching the video because it's 😂🤣🤣
I can't even take it seriously. Haha. 😅 Racist highways.
I'm still here for the comments though. I'm entertaining myself while waiting on my phone to charge
@@CandiceMMartinezyou didn’t watch it. The people who designed the freeways’ placement were being racist in where they chose to build them.
But you just laugh and laugh without knowing what was said. Maybe if you laugh derisively at enough people, systemic racism will just disappear.
Gotta say, I think one thing we could be doing is creating more mass transit too. Obviously a company that MAKES CARS would want as many private automobiles on the road as possible, and of course that was the primary motivation for GM's Futurama, but the reality is - mass transit is so much better for the environment and often it's more efficient too (when it's built correctly and supported with an eye to success). Where I live - small city in the US South - it has taken the city twenty YEARS to build up a "fleet" of five whole buses. That's it, that's all the mass transit we get. There's not even a cab company. There are perhaps a half dozen services for disabled patients who need non-emergency medical transport (ie, poor folks needing to go to dialysis and the like), but even with something like that, we tolerated having just ONE such service for decades. It's insane, and is an enormous red flag showing how racism still affects the city, no matter what the public stance supposedly is. But a functional - even ROBUST - bus system would mean that way more folks could make it to work without needing to worry about their car (a boon in a state where if you happen to have a vehicle at all, you don't qualify for food stamps, no matter WHAT your income is). Folks who CAN get to work WILL work, because no one actually wants to live hand-to-mouth if they can help it. I also think putting more money into the roads in general - for maintaining them better, for making changes that help reduce those negative impacts (like adding barrier walls and trees and such to help reduce noise) - would help, because doing more work on them would create more jobs (at least one would hope).
RAIL-BASED PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION is the answer here, as buses are nothing but automobiles themselves....
@@CraigFThompson I mean, it'd be nice: but please recall that US rail has been yanking OUT lines and running fewer trains for decades. And something on rails for inside a city requires all new stuff, making another obstacle in the road to progress. (puns intended)
Whereas in my state at least, we have a mini-industry around "shuttle bus" usage. (No idea if the things are also made here, though I doubt it.) But the casinos use a TON of the things, some of them are hybrid, and when they're "retired" from casinos, some of the cities buy them up, refurbish them a bit and give 'em a municipal coat of paint. My city has SIX of these now, where there used to be one and it was broken half the time. School buses could be refurb'd too. We HAVE those, and they would do as a measure while we fight for cleaner mass transit.
I remember tucker Carlson sarcastically saying "so now roads can be racist!“....
Ignoring years of factual evidence!
Thank you for this report. I was raised 1 mile from the Baltimore Viaduct and never ever knew this information. This was amazing
Just think, we could've had a national railway that didn't destroy Black and Brown neighborhoods while also being better for the environment, cheaper, and safer than driving. Somehow, Henry Ford is responsible for this...
It was GM’s Alfred P. Sloan who primary destroyed the nation’s passenger rail, with the illegal sabotaging of city lines from Baltimore to L.A. Atlantic Richfield also was in on the conspiracy.
We did have a national railway though. We had the most extensive rail network the world had ever seen. White people preferred cars so they could pretend black people didn't exist.
Not only Ford, but the entire automotive industry, as well as the energy corporations, as well. Sup'm tells me that the nation would've been a helluva lot better off if Eisenhower had just left Hitler's autobahn in Germany, instead of importing it to the United States....
We had train cities popping up already as well and they allowed automotive lobbyist win over the future welfare of the people. Visiting a country with wide scale public transit really highlights how abysmal our transportation is here. It’s so expensive, wasteful, and bad for the environment to all have to have our own car to get anywhere 😢
Yeah, but you also had to share a train with people who were known felons and those with mental health issues. No thanks.
Highways are the true definition of what “racist” and “racism” mean. Not what people have watered down the definition to..
People throw that word around for the smallest of things like being observant about culture, making idiotic statements like “black people can be racist” but no one understands the true origin or purpose of that words. These highways personify that origin
This is how they stopped people outside our community from having to patronize our businesses
It’s not a “new idea” though. Germany built the Autobahn before this and the US just copied it.
The only difference is Germany didn’t plow it through neighborhoods.
In fact, Eisenhower originally intended for them to be built just like the autobahn, with on/off ramps becoming minor roads into the cities where they'd then become wide boulevards with intersections and traffic signals, along with NON-AUTOMOTIVE public transportation along that corridor; he also planned for toll booths to be arranged at each state's border, and at ten or twenty mile intervals. He further arranged for special taxes to be collected from motorists and vehicle fleet owners ALONE....
The automotive industry and energy corporations lobbied congress for the disastrous changes we must all now suffer with, including the fact that people owning no motor vehicles whatsoever still must pay their hard-earned tax dollars into a network they cannot directly use.
The entire video is about the intentional destruction of marginalized communities, using "building highways means progress" as an excuse. The entire point. The entire video. The entire idea.
If Germany wasn't using highways to demolish "undesirables" then they weren't using the same idea.
When I saw this video three words came to mind: Yes, Robert and Moses.
And Robert Moses was totally owned and controlled by GENERAL MOTORS....
In Stockton California they bulldozed some historic Filipino buildings to make way for the Crosstown Freeway. The state later acknowledged that they had done wrong and today there is a sign that reads Little Manila as you enter the freeway.
Same thing in Charlotte NC
Happening now on Broad River in Columbia, S.C. My people sold a slither of her land and they harassed a family until the moved, a lot of people know the story here. It's just a bad situation and they did not need to touch the highway when the roads are horrid.
These roads have also have had negative impacts in rural areas. I recently saw a video about Route 66 and how many of the towns that were thriving and prosperous when the road was on its heyday are now completely or nearly abandoned because of the interstates bypassing them.
Totally!
This was one of the main drivers of _red lining._
The I-35 Austin-San Antonio corridor is one of the best examples of this, *ESPECIALLY* when driving around Austin _proper._
I-35 south ATX corridor (the one facing west Austin) -- lots of skyscrapers, big tech, etc.
I-35 north ATXA corridor -- while the inner city portion has been gentrified as all hell, the rest of the east side of Austin ( *especially* the 744 area) is notoriously poor.
That's a very good example. East Austin is the black side of town and of course they put I35 right between downtown and East Austin to keep the black people out of the white areas. And of course TxDOT just decided to widen the segregation wall in the coming years. It's sickening that we haven't learned from our darkest moments.
You missed the point. Video says that highways were build through black neighborhoods. And that does not hold in Austin. It's true that most of East of I-35 is poor but still majority of people living east of I-35 are not black
@@SebastianTysler East Austin was predominantly black when I-35 was built. I-35 was purposefully designed to be difficult to cross in order to keep the black people out of white neighborhoods. They could have routed it around the city but they very intentionally chose to make it a segregation wall.
6:00 not to mention lead exposure from gasoline at the time
147 and Hayti in Durham NC.
I’m 57 And I witness this in NC.
At least in Chicago where I’m from, the highways and other urban renewal projects destroyed white immigrant low income areas as well.
Yes, most highways go through Black or historical Black neighborhoods.
Could’ve included Syracuse and I-81 as well
They did the same here in Jacksonville, building I-95 and the reason why the Skyrail system failed here was cause they didn’t want to connect them to or through the black communities
Yes. The fact that it's even a topic. Yes.
3:46 Not only "black and brown people..." but in NYC, Finns and Jews were among the groups that were displaced by highway construction.
But Finns at least faced almost no discrimination in relocating to neighborhoods with housing as good for the same or better prices. Jews certainly faced discrimination, but not to the extent that black and brown New Yorkers did during the mid and late 20th century. Highway displacement was a significant theft of housing equity wealth from black and Latino people - which was what Robert Moses and many segregationist developers tight with him intended.
Moses was more overtly racist than this video indicates. He blocked the hiring of black construction workers and contractors for the building of the 1964 World’s Fair site.
@@brianarbenz1329 Well said. I can't remember if Moses did this, but some highway planners in the 1950s would purposefully build bridges too short so that buses on the black side of town were unable to pass underneath.
@brianarbenz1329 Even worse, look at his reconstruction of Riverside Park.
@mariusfacktor3597 He did that on the LI parkways. I never understood that, because the Blacks and Puerto Ricans I grew up around all had cars.
@@mariusfacktor3597 "Short"?! Don't you mean "with extremely low clearance"?!
Here from Richmond where I-64 runs above Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground and I-95 displaced black residents in Jackson Ward. This area is where the two highways meet!
Thanks!
Im today years old when I learned about this
Thank you
Yes! I-70 in indianapolis
I don't necessarily know about highways but I know the disproportionate placement of speed cameras in NYC are...
Same thing jus happened in Cleveland the opportunity corridor sponsored by Cleveland clinic cuts right thru the inner city
I-10 was routed through the Macon community of Tallahasse in the north central part of town, reducing it to a fraction of its former glory, and MOST of the black-owned farm land on the northwestern portion of town.... not an accident.
Many salutations!!! When I first arrived here in San Antonio in May 2001, one of the things that drove me batty are how some of the roadways do not follow a strict north-south and east-west directional alignment as was the case when I was being brought up in Harris County @ TX. Upon arriving in San Antonio from the east, IH-10 then turns north along IH-35 prior to diverging north-northwest?!? What the skull!?! IH-35 runs north and south along the western periphery of downtown San Antonio before diverging east north-east!?! What the brick!?! The last time I checked north-northwest is not west like even-numbered interstate highways are supposed to run. Ditto for east-northeast; like all odd-numbered interstate highways, IH-35 is supposed to run north and south . . . somebody, please reach out to me and explain the rationale behind the aforementioned highway routing.
Anyway, as for the topic of this video . . . the decision about where to build the interstate highways are a product of the civic priorities at the time. Capitalism's primary emphasis is the accumulation of capital as its name suggests; unfortunately, it is only after several years that we are having demonstrated that we need to be of much greater prowess in allocating capital as we are at accumulating it. VIA Metropolitan Transit constructed a transit plaza just to the south of my apartment which is nice -- if not for the fact that the County Jail is sitting right to the west as if to say, "We care nothing of whatever »good« choices you think you made for yourself; this will be your end destination." Centro Plaza has several derelict and dilapidated buildings to the northwest that really should be demolished but are not because the VIA leadership feels that they are of historical significance. I am of the emphatic conviction that the adjective "historical" is given a lot more significance than it really deserves. I have been to several iterations of Fiesta San Antonio and every time without fail there are SO MANY cars and it incenses me that this is behaved toward as an inevitable consequence . . . I strongly disagree. I also watch a few urbanism video content and believe that inducing demand for municipal transit is not only possible but necessary.
One method to combat the Fiesta San Antonio traffic jam is to lock down every highway egress ramp along the portion of IH-10, IH-35, US-90, and US-281 inside Loop 410 except for the highway-to-highway interchanges and the egresses that lead to VIA transit centers and park-n-rides. By doing this, the civilian motorists find themselves trapped on the highways and over time will see fit to either avail municipal transit or simply not make the trip downtown at all during Fiesta San Antonio.
Another method is to physically revise the aforementioned highways to operate as follows:
Eastbound IH-10, southbound IH-35: no change except for also prosecuting a concurrency with southbound US-281/IH-37 along the western periphery of the central business district
Northbound IH-35: it shall turn east to prosecute a concurrency with eastbound IH-10/US-90 and then north to prosecute a concurrency with northbound US-281/IH-37 along with westbound IH-10 along the eastern periphery of the central business district prior to resuming its east-northeast divergence out of the central business district.
Northbound US-281/IH-37: no change except for also prosecuting a concurrency with northbound IH-35 and westbound IH-10 along the eastern periphery of the central business district
Westbound IH-10: it shall turn north to prosecute a concurrency with northbound US-281/IH-37 and then west-southwest to prosecute a concurrency with southbound IH-35 prior to resuming its north-northwest divergence out of the central business district.
Southbound US-281: it shall turn west southwest to prosecute a concurrency with southbound IH-35 and then east to prosecute a concurrency with eastbound IH-10 prior to resuming its southbound regular course.
This method involves physically revising the highways and might not be for the faint of heart; still, physically revising a roadway is effective in making civilian motorists uncomfortable and thus more likely to slow down which makes things safer all around. This requires a hefty dose of civic courage and political will!
Whew; quite a helluva dissertation there!
@@CraigFThompsonRight? Most of the dissertation didn’t have anything to do with the video
There's always going to be little exceptions to the E-W = even / N-S = odd Interstate rules. Usually for roads to get around obstacles, whether it's natural ones like rivers or mountains, or built-up urban areas that couldn't be bulldozed out of the way. The numbers should be viewed for the overall regional/national orientation of the highway, not a guarantee that you'll always be physically traveling the signed direction at any given time. Interstate 10 makes a lengthy southeastward "dip" starting at Junction to reach and serve San Antonio in the first place, which leads to it being nearly N-S in the inner city before turning straight east towards Houston at the junction with I-35/US-90. I-94 in Minnesota's Twin Cities behaves the same way, running straight N-S west of downtown Minneapolis, before turning east towards St. Paul.
One key step is for planners to be accountable to voters in the areas they design. They often hold public forums and ignore public input in favor of the plans they made before inviting public input. Another key is that displaced people should be fairly compensated and relocation should involve the community. If the government builds a highway over your home, they should not be able to condemn the property, allowing them to pay less than market value. In fact the value of each property should be determined by how much it would cost to relocate to a comparable neighborhood in a comparable property. Relocation plans should be in place, and even new buildings built before people are displaced. If people are being asked to sacrifice for public areas, the public is obligated to make sure they land on their feet.
Looking through the comments, hearing tales of the city (Memphis) placing highways through certain communities and not others is evidenced here in Memphis
This is historically what they did to a lot of Black communities. They started with the infrastructure building highways, bridges and roads and business in order to separate and to break up the BLACK communities. They did this to almost every major Black city that had a community. This was basically systematic racism at its best.
See Interstate 10 over NORTH Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans.
Research. Even though it can be costly and long, an extensive research of the area(s) might lower the chance of this happening again.
Of course!
Don’t forget about power lines. Even today, when the electric company wants to expand, they don’t look at new subdivisions or wealthy neighborhoods. They aim their sights on trailer parks which house a majority of poor people. They say they can move a trailer some where else. Where? These same people are responsible for zoning where trailer are not allowed. So where do they move them? They don’t. So now they eliminate two eye sores most people don’t even know their area have these zoning restrictions because they are tightly packed into new legislation that no one read.
Sadly, Boston’s West End didn’t survive urban renewal. That wasn’t due to needing the land for highways, so much as developers wanting the land to build high-end apartments and condos, and the city going along because they wanted the increased tax revenue. The West End was working class - and not a slum - known for being ethnically and racially mixed, and had a strong sense of community.
Between the mid 1950s and mid 1960s, the residential areas were razed. Realizing they could never afford to live in the new buildings, evicted residents moved wherever they could afford and/or be accepted. There were some who believed it was a conspiracy to dismantle an area that was strongly integrated and cooperative. I don’t think it was that deeply planned out; it was just about greed. But I’m sure those who were strongly racist and classist didn’t complain about the outcome.
Yes
Most definitely.
Columbus Ohio is like that. I 70 and I 71 form a crosshair and separates the rich from the poor and blacks from whites add SR 315 and 161 added a even more deeper cut by dividing the Northwest (Wealthy areas) from the middle and lower class.
Great content 👏👏👏👏👏
I saw the title and knew they were going to talk about Rondo. Aside from breaking the neighborhood apart, 94 running where it does doesn’t make logical sense. There’s literally incomplete ramps to where it was supposed to intersect with 35 E and 35 W that are overgrown with 50 years of weeds, so you have to get off on a city street, buzz around, and join 94 off a city street on ramp. The planning goes beyond just not caring about Rondo, it literally went out of its way to break it apart.
Up next -> The Disturbing History of America’s Justice System. OR
The Disturbing History of America’s Educational System. OR
The Disturbing History of America’s Healthcare System. OR
The Disturbing History of America’s Housing System
And On and On
The disturbing history of disturbing history.
Yes they are.
Does anyone realize that Irish and Italians had their neighborhoods destroyed by freeways too?
I have mixed feelings about the racist intentions, too many anomalies, including part of the Cross Bronx. When it was extended eastward to the Throggs Neck bridge, it went through what was, and still is a an affluent neighborhood, within earshot of residential areas, with a large white population. The same can be said for most of the Queens’ portion of the Long Island Expressway.
Thanks Sis
My Caucasian ex was literally telling me about this a week or so ago. How interstates were never intended to go through neighborhoods but they put them right through all the black neighborhoods that’s why there’s never any close highway entrances in the middle of nowhere where
Your comment appears rather unfinished....