urban renewal

The Biden Administration Wants to Undo the Damage of Urban Highways. It Won't be Simple

In cities across the nation, highway projects blighted working class communities, especially nonwhite ones. Is it possible for new policies to heal that damage? 

Houston's Highway History Teaches Planners What Not to Do

by Kyle Shelton

Transportation planners have begun to collect the opinions of community residents affected by proposed highway projects, but they have yet to begin to meaningfully incorporate those concerns into planning. Doing so could prevent repeating the blighting effects of urban transporation projects.

Will Baltimore's Black Communities Ever See Justice for the "Highway to Nowhere"?

The Robert Moses-designed expressway displaced Black families and neighborhoods for a stub of a freeway that ultimately stretched for less than two miles and does not connect to the rest of the interstate system. 

An Unlikely Coalition Trying to Save a Nashville Black Landmark

A Nashville Elks lodge building was the 1960s home of a music club where superstars of Black music—and the yet-to-be famous Jimi Hendrix—played during the segregation era. Like many such landmarks, decades of highway building broke up the surrounding community and made the building endangered today. 

North Milwaukee Looks to Highway History to Reshape the Future

Clayborn Benson of the Wisconsin Black Historical Society and Museum is finding common cause with planning activists who want to take down the freeways that separated North Milwaukee from the rest of the city and contributed to its decline. 

The Romance of the Highway Obscures Harm to Communities of Color

by Ryan Reft

Secretary Pete Buttigieg's comments that interstate construction entrenched racial segregation were denounced as "woke" by critics. But history shows that highway planners knew that such consequences were likely to ensue, and proceeded anyway. 

Exiting/In

by Francesca T. Royster

A family and community history in Black Nashville puts the rise of "Music Row" in the context of urban renewal projects that destroyed African American communities and institutions, and the unacknowledged Black presence in country music. 

The Limits of Nonprofit Urban Development in Boston

by Claire Dunning

In Boston, nonprofit agencies became the principal vehicle for redevelopment. While they could empower residents of poor communities to compete for grants and negotiate with city authorities, they couldn't make a deep impact on inequality in the city and let city agencies off the hook for discriminatory policies. 

Mr. Biden, Tear Down this Highway

It's time to stop expanding the urban highways that divide communities, perpetuate racial segregation and harm health, and to consider removing them entirely, argues one architectural designer. 

Exhibition Shows Ongoing Toll of Minneapolis Freeway Building

"We are clearly critics of 35W and the freeway system but I drove on a freeway to get here so I'm not above this history and I think we're all culpable," project co-lead Dr. Greg Donofrio said.

The Second Destruction of Tulsa's Black Community

by Karlos K. Hill

Photographer Donald Thompson has set out to capture a visual history of Tulsa's Greenwood district, an African American community decimated first by the 1921 race massacre and then by urban renewal in the 1970s. Historian Karlos Hill interviews him about his work. 

Hardcore Urban Renewal: The Punk Origins Of The City Creative

The authors' study and advocacy for place-based and democratic redevelopment policies is rooted in their experiences in underground punk music scenes in the 1990s. 

In Open Letter, City Planning Officials Acknowledge Agencies' Role in Racist Development Decisions

"'Our society is structured around white supremacy,' Philadelphia Planning Commission head Eleanor Sharpe says. 'It’s not a debate, but there’s this fear to acknowledge it. That fear serves the retention of the systems that are not working'."

The Rise of "UniverCity"

Universities wield increasing control over their surrounding communities. Historian Davarian Baldwin discusses the impact of that power for good and ill. 

What It Looks Like to Reconnect Black Communities Torn Apart by Highways

An interactive feature shows the impact of highway building on Black communities throughout the urban United States, and prospects for reconnecting neighborhoods previously divided by asphalt. 

Before Downtown L.A.'s High Rises, Bunker Hill Was Simply Home

"Today, the Victorian mansions of Bunker Hill are often remembered nostalgically, but the community was also a vibrant, walkable neighborhood in the middle of a bustling downtown."

Can Removing Highways Fix America’s Cities?

The infrastructure bill debate has prompted historical reflection on the urban consequences of highway construction and imagination of alternatives. 

In New Orleans, Documenting History Of Iconic Black Street

Two New Orleans area activists, Raynard Sanders and documentary filmmaker Katherine Cecil, head the Claiborne Avenue History Project which aims to document and publicize the street's history. 

The New York Highway That Racism Built: ‘It Does Nothing But Pollute’

A generation of urban highway projects that advanced urban renewal and community displacement in the 1950s and 1960s are nearing obsolescence. Activists hope that the Biden infrastructure plan can replace roads and repair neighborhoods. 

The Violent Origin Story of Dodger Stadium

by Ranjani Chakraborty and Melissa Hirsch

Through interviews with several former residents of the area, Vox explores the story of their neighborhoods razed to make room for Dodger Stadium. It’s one that’s often missing from the history of Los Angeles and has created a double-edged relationship for some Dodger fans. Features commentary by historian Priscilla Leiva.