WaPo: Interstate highways were touted as modern marvels. Racial injustice was part of the plan.

[BumRushDaShow]

Interstate highways were touted as modern marvels. Racial injustice was part of the plan.

In cities, hundreds of thousands of homes had to give way for President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s dream. A majority were in communities of color.



The Long Island Expressway, seen in 1963, effectively divided Black and White communities there. The same pattern was repeated across the country as the interstate highway system was built. (Walter Leporati/Getty Images)


By Erin Blakemore
August 17, 2021 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

In the heady days after the Eisenhower administration announced landmark legislation to create an interstate highway system, visions of future travel captivated the national consciousness. Soaring bridges. Cloverleaf interchanges. Higher speed limits. The modern interstates would have them all. Take Interstate 77, which was greeted with fanfare in Charlotte. “It’ll be wide, handsome, and toll-free,” a 1959 newspaper story gushed. Yet building the system would cost more than the millions of dollars that states and the federal government poured into construction.

In Charlotte, it meant bulldozing Brooklyn, a vibrant Black neighborhood where, former resident Barbara C. Steele recalled in a 2004 oral history, “everybody knew everybody, and everybody was somebody.” Her displacement was more norm than exception. Between 1957 and 1977, the U.S. Transportation Department estimates, more than 475,000 households were forced out for the highways’ construction. A majority of those lived in urban communities with low incomes and high concentrations of people of color. In many cases, that was by design. “The interstate highway system provided a safe, fast way of getting from coast to coast,” said historian Gretchen Sorin, author of “Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights.”

“The problem was when you put in highways, you have to figure out where to put them.”Rectifying at least some of these past transgressions is a goal of the Biden administration’s massive infrastructure push, with billions of dollars proposed to “reconnect” communities and address historic inequities. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has acknowledged the “racism physically built into some of our highways” and the “lasting damage” suffered by the communities that were targeted. Many of those decisions were set in motion long before the interstates themselves, at a time when America was booming — and bursting at the seams.

Veterans had returned home from World War II and started or expanded families; Black Southerners continued streaming to Northern cities for greater opportunity. Urban centers grew more and more crowded. In response, the federal government underwrote a massive construction program that fueled the rise of the suburb. But people of color were systematically excluded. Around the country, redlining and racially restrictive deeds and covenants discouraged and often outright forbade them from buying or renting suburban homes. The supposed blight of America’s central cities, especially racially mixed, lower-income neighborhoods, became a cornerstone of the interstate highway system.

More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/08/16/interstate-highways-were-touted-modern-marvels-racial-injustice-was-part-plan/

It is fantastic to see that baked into President Biden's & Democrats' Infrastructure Plan, are the types of of things to rebuild actual communities that were just bulldozed through and left to neglect to create suburbs that whole swaths of people were forbidden (defacto or dejure) to move to, while people condescendingly pointed (and STILL point) to "the slums" that resulted, blaming the people whose lives were upended over generations, for their plight.

It's not going to be easy but I have seen some signs in cities (including here in Philly) at reluctantly addressing the issue. For example, reclaiming now-abandoned train viaducts to create parks and walkways, like a recent "rail park" created through the Callowhill neighborhood of Philly that sits adjacent to downtown, officially opened 3 years ago -

[kskiska]

1. I'd always read that they were built

in case of atomic attack on our key cities, the road would permit quick evacuation of target areas.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. That too. And as the headline says, "racial injustice was part of the plan."

[Ron Green]

3. Highways in cities were the worst idea imaginable.

Cheap gas and fear have built an ugly nation.

[ananda]

4. Remembering how they put I-59 right through Fifth Ward.

Teaching at an inner city school in Houston gave me the
opportunity to hear about the history of the Black neighborhood
from the older teachers.

Another story was about the slumlord Worthing, who in
his later years established a yearly scholarship program
for Black students in Third and Fifth Wards.

There were others too. I especially liked the ones about
Barbara Jordan.

[marmar]

5. Yep

The history of Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood is a story of both triumph and tragedy. A thriving area composed of Black doctors, restaurants, grocers, churches, nightclubs, and more. It’s where Rev. C.L. Franklin opened his first church, and where his daughter Aretha Franklin recorded her first album.

Despite the flourishing neighborhood, Black Bottom was destroyed as a result of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. In 1964, the I-375 freeway officially opened, connecting I-75 to Jefferson Ave., making Black Bottom a community of Detroit’s past.

Now, local and state officials are looking to reimagine one of America’s shortest interstate highways.

The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) announced plans to demolish the controversial interstate and pave a new boulevard and business district for the one-mile stretch. ............(more)

https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2021/06/16/mdots-i-375-project-aims-to-rebuild-what-it-destroyed

[BumRushDaShow]

14. Thanks for the link to that article

I have been tracking a Hurricane/Tropical Storm Henri since yesterday (we had rain impacts here in Philly from it that may continue on and off through tomorrow morning), so have tried to pop in and out of DU today. I finally got chance to read the link.

I know that Joe Madison (on SiriusXM UrbanView) references C.L. Franklin quite a bit, particularly his 1950s-era "The Eagle Stirreth her nest" sermon, and he'll play portions every once in awhile.

I was able to travel to Detroit back in the '90s a couple times for work and even stayed at the hotel in the Renaissance Center (that had GSA rates at the time - I think it was a Marriott hotel in the complex).

It was a shame that something like this belied the rest of what happened with Detroit over the years (even with all the commerce separate from the car industry, that comes in and out over the Ambassador Bridge) -

[BumRushDaShow]

18. Oh I know what was on the other side...

I walked around the vicinity of the complex while there. I always like finding local convenience stores to buy some bring-back-to-the-hotel meals when traveling, and was surprised about the large Arab community right there in the adjacent neighborhood. I also walked to the (federal government) office that I was there to visit that week, which was located nearby.

I also got chance to hop on the little people mover monorail, which was cool. That is when I got a taste of the "real" deal. It was literally 5 pm - 6 pm on a weekday and the part of the downtown that the monorail went through, was completely empty. Not a person to be seen bustling around in sight on the streets during what would normally be "rush hour". And there were also boarded up skyscrapers. It was pretty sobering.

However during one of the trips, me and some of my coworkers went through the Windsor tunnel over into Windsor to some restaurant for dinner, so that was my first trip into Ontario province (before then I had only been to Montreal years ago, in Quebec province). I later visited another office in Washington state and got chance to drive up to Vancouver, BC., and did get back to Ontario for a vacation in Niagara Falls (on the Canadian side) about 6 years ago.

[BumRushDaShow]

25. I'm a retired fed after 30+ years

so had lots of work-related travels (including training trips) around the country. During the latter part of my career as a supervisor, my boss wanted me to do face-to-face appraisals with my direct reports one year, so I went to 6 cities (not counting the people I supervised locally) in 5 weeks and ended up with what I dub "plane neck".

And yeah, IIRC, Detroit lost about 3/4 million of its population since its peak by the time I first visited. What has been difficult for cities like that (which was originally the case for Pittsburgh) was that they had gone "all in" with one type of industry and when that industry began to wane, there wasn't the effort to try to pivot and diversify into something else. Pittsburgh eventually managed to do it and although they still have some steel industry left, they shifted into being a medical/hospital system town, and that helped them to recover.

Here in Philly, our industrial past essentially disappeared much earlier but we did have a few backstops in addition to the tourism aspect, that included big universities/colleges as well as having the port (even with losing the big navy base, which has since been converted into an ever-growing "business center" but still has old ships sitting down there - https://navyyard.org/ )

And then Comcast moved in and they constructed the 2 largest towers in the city, the 2nd one being the tallest in a U.S. city outside of the ones in NY and Chicago...

The one thing that did bug me out about Detroit is that they are the furthest midwestern big city still in the Eastern time zone, so having traveled there during summers, it was a bug out to see the sun finally setting at 9:30 pm at night.

[MichMan]

29. The 1967 riots were devastating to Detroit for decades

Started an exodus of people to the suburbs

[BumRushDaShow]

30. Most large U.S. cities had "riots" in the '60s

including right here in Philadelphia. And all of them also had a "white flight" out of the cities after that.

But you purposefully miss why there was unrest in the '60s in the first place, which is no different from what we have seen this past year.

The PROBLEM is that the "white flight" was hastened by the construction of highways to those suburbs to ease the commute back and forth to work in the cities they fled. But once there, they locked the fucking gates to whole demographics of POC who were REFUSED entry into those self-same suburban developments.

Back in the late '60s here in Philly, my parents were looking at possibly moving to the 'burbs but the FUCKING real estate agents were refusing to show them any houses there. There were never any "available" or they were "already sold".

It's called RED-LINING.

[MichMan]

31. I was replying to the previous post about the large decline in Detroit population.

The 1967 riots were especially devastating to Detroit. I know this having lived in the region for decades.

My post was a simple statement and was not intended to be a dissertation on race riots throughout the US.

[BumRushDaShow]

33. And I was replying to your dismissal of the reasons for the population loss

because Detroit was not the only city to "lose population" and we certainly did here in Philly due to the self-same "white flight".

At our peak, we had a little over 2 million here in 1960 (in the literal city/county, not just the metro area). And after the 1970 census, we had dropped to a low of just over 1.5 million in 2000, and have been slowly clawing our way back.

We used to be the 4th largest city and are, literally by just a couple thousand, now at 6th, but the trend back up is a good sign.

[MichMan]

35. Other reasons for City of Detroit population decline other than the 1967 riot

2013 bankruptcy, crime, schools, taxes ,City services, blight.

City government seems to only be concerned about downtown area.

Corrupt political leaders (Monica Conyers, Kwame Kilpatrick, Charles Pugh, all convicted of felonies and removed or resigned from office)

Not just white flight, also black flight to nearby suburbs like Southfield and others. Given the factors above, no surprise why the suburbs are much more attractive.

City of Detroit population trend below. (It has been steadily declining for decades)

1950 1.8 million
1960 1.7 million
1970 1.5 million
1980 1.2 million
1990 1.0 million
2000 951K
2010 711k
2020 664k

[BumRushDaShow]

36. Again you miss what happened that was directly tied to post-WW2, and thus you prove my point

because you see the decline BEGINNING after 1950, which is why you neglected to include these numbers -

1930 1,568,662
1940 1,623,452

It EXACTLY corresponds with guess what? The very subject that the OP is about - the Eisenhower administration's creation of the interstate highway system, post-WW2, to feed the very suburbs that WW2 vets were flocking to using the GI Bill, where at the same time, black WW2 vets were fucked over trying to use those same benefits for mortgages in those very same suburbs, and were refused the mortgages.

It is well-documented - https://www.history.com/news/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-benefits

Thank goodness for the internet real estate sites that manage to put what is available out there today (in general because some realized that "anybody" can see available homes that way, so the ones that they now want "hidden" from "undesirable POC" are no longer being listed "publicly" that way anymore).

At the time, blacks made up less than 10% of the population of Detroit and the city mainly gained black population due to the WW2 migration to the north from the even more virulent southern states. The black population was almost doubling every 10 years from 1940 on, where it was 9%, then 16%, then 29% by 1960. By 1970, it was over 40%.

Once the movement out by whites began, the troubles that you cite began. You lose tax base and you have people "left behind" with little or no corresponding ability to keep people there nor any assistance to have freedom to live where one wants - what essentially was dubbed "benign neglect". That, along with the backdrop of virulent racism during the '60s - BOTH in the north and south, that was often obscured by the anti-Vietnam War movement, it just ignited a powder keg there and across the nation.

The bullshit of police violence against POC back then was alive and well and foretold the past year with George Floyd and fucking cops kneeling on a black man's neck for almost 9 minutes until he was suffocated to death while other cops just stood around, which was enough for people to revolt - both back then and this past year.

There is a good little summary of it here (from Michigan State University) -

Causes

Two major race riots have had lasting effects on the city of Detroit. The riots of 1943 can be seen as a clash between whites and the new influx of southern blacks competing for resources. Housing, transportation and education were just three of the major sources of conflict between the two races. Housing was difficult to come by in W.W. II era Detroit and blacks were confined exclusively to the Brewster projects. The riots of '43 pale in comparison in both size and significance to the riots of 1967. According to one website, "The origins of urban unrest in Detroit were rooted in a multitude of political, economic, and social factors including police abuse, lack of affordable housing, urban renewal projects, economic inequality, black militancy, and rapid demographic change." The race riots of 1967 brought the problems many blacks faced everyday to the national spotlight.

Beginning with the elaborate designs of highway systems of the Eisenhower era, fleeing to the suburbs for a different life became an increasingly more popular option. Whites who could afford to moved in droves throughout the late 50s and well into the 60s to the suburbs to escape traffic, crime and racial problems. Outright fear of blacks and increased levels of racial tension only made the suburban life more lucrative.

Roads are costly to maintain and Detroit has neither the time nor the money to focus on maintaining them. Combine this with the millions upon millions it will cost to maintain other types of rapidly aging infrastructure and you have one bankrupt city. Waterpipes, Horizontal development is not only a waste of resources but in the long run causes unforeseen consequences.

It was the original hope of city planners than horizontal expansion would be a good thing. On paper it looked like a good way to increase the tax base and promote growth and development. But people did not spend their time or their money in Detroit or the older satellite communities and expansion moved farther and farther away. Contrast Troy with Detroit, notice a difference? Not only have people left Detroit but businesses have as well.

https://project.geo.msu.edu/geogmich/detroit_history.htm

And your citation of the more "current" and "corrupt" politicos there again deflects from what was a root cause noted in the OP - the baked-in racism of the highway system and its aftermath, that made it easier for one demographic to "escape" with their biases intact.

You blame the victims of racism for their plight, both back then and today.

[leftstreet]

47. +1

Thanks for taking the time to post the links and excerpts

good stuff

[BumRushDaShow]

51. You are welcome

There is a lot of bitterness - generations worth - built up in the community.

The OP article was essentially giving the background history for what will soon be some targeted programs that are included in the recently-passed "Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act" (and hopefully its follow-on, whenever that happens), once it becomes law, which can start to address 70 years of urban neglect caused by decisions made about how to implement the construction of the interstate highway system, and the negative impacts that this had on an already-marginalized community.

I know it will never solve what is an almost intractable problem, but if it can bring some changes and projects to help rebuild, then I definitely welcome it!

[BumRushDaShow]

44. I saw what you posted and self-deleted and I am going to post my response anyway

You are were using the thread to attack 2 recent black elected officials who BOTH had parents who were former elected members of Congress and activists in Detroit, meaning as children/adolescents, they grew up drenched in the world of "politics" by being in households of politicians, and thus exposed to the dark side of politics.

Since neither of them were born in the 1950s when the highway system was conceived, they had nothing to do with the OP. And if you want to point out children of politicians, I just watched one's "Farewell" speech at noon today - the soon-to-be-at-midnight "former governor" of the state of NY Andrew Cuomo, whose father Mario Cuomo was previously a governor of NY.

What surprises me is that you didn't whip out Coleman Young's name, but what doesn't surprise me is that in the midst of the city's "white flight", you neglected to mention former mayor, former City Council member, and "corrupt politician" (convicted of tax evasion), Louis Miriani, or the worst of them all related to the period being discussed for the OP - Albert Cobo -

(snip)

4. Albert Cobo

Mayor from Jan. 3, 1950-Sept. 12, 1957

(snip)

Cobo ran Detroit at the city's peak population: more than 1.8 million people in 1950. It would be all downhill for the Motor City from here. While the writing was on the wall, Cobo was unable to do anything to stop it — in fact, he would wind up encouraging it. In Cobo's defense, he was trying to reinvent an aging city. This was a Motor City deemed antiquated and with turn-of-the-century architectural relics in a period of Mid-Century Modern structures and newfangled inventions — such as fluorescent lighting and fancy-pants drop ceilings — luring folks to suburbia.

(snip)

Housing discrimination was rampant in Detroit. And many of Cobo's policies had a negative effect on housing opportunities for African Americans. He vigorously opposed black public housing because he opposed subsidies for poor people in favor of more private ownership of property. Many accused him, however, of trying to "protect housing values" in white neighborhoods. The Michigan Chronicle characterized the election of Cobo as "one of the most vicious campaigns of race-baiting and playing upon the prejudices of all segments of the Detroit population." Scott Martelle, in his book "Detroit: A Biography," says that Cobo planned to demolish the slums, home to mostly immigrants and black people, and pay for it by selling the land to developers. "The people who pay taxes want better services for their money," Cobo said in a radio interview.

Martelle wrote: "The key phrase was 'people who pay taxes.' Those were primarily property-owning whites; most blacks were renters. Cobo's word choice was a subtle reinforcement of racial codes. ... Cobo was the candidate of the wealthy, and of the white." Cobo also heavily pushed for the expansion of the expressway system; many of his backers were wealthy white suburbanites, who wanted a faster, easier commute into the city. Cobo's quest for more and more freeways directly fueled the city's decline. Instead of making the city more accessible and bringing folks in, it caused the city to bleed out, both population and businesses. The freeways simply made it easier for folks to live elsewhere — where yards were bigger, homes were newer and property was cheaper — yet still work downtown.

Many of those freeways that he lobbied for went, unsurprisingly, through predominately black neighborhoods. He also was part of the big push that demolished the center of black life in Detroit, Paradise Valley and the Black Bottom. After erasing these neighborhoods from existence starting in 1950, the land would sit unused and overgrown for some five years. Black Detroiters watched their community flattened for an overgrown wasteland of nothingness. Cobo also neglected civil-rights initiatives that would have integrated the city's black population. Regular police crackdowns targeted black communities, yet he did nothing to stop them. It was not a peaceful time in the city. And it would only get worse.

(snip)

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/2014/08/29/5-worst-mayors-in-detroit-history/14799541/

But that is par for the course.

THAT is the history of Detroit.

[BumRushDaShow]

49. And we knew who was govenor at the time

Although he had earlier been out there in support of the civil rights protests against the housing discrimination at the time and eventually became HUD Secretary under Nixon.



https://www.freep.com/pages/interactives/1967-detroit-riot/

And since another poster invoked Monica Conyers, here was her father almost 55 years ago, urging calm -

[MichMan]

52. Her father??? John Conyers was Monica's husband.

[BumRushDaShow]

53. I see you are back

Yet you still didn't address the insistence on looking at the politicians of today as a blame for what happened in the past.

[marmar]

37. The wall has been gone for a long time now....

[A HERETIC I AM]

24. It was a Westin, originally

It is a Marriott now, however.

https://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/dtwdt-detroit-marriott-at-the-renaissance-center/

I lived in the Detroit area in the 90's and worked for an Indy Car engine manufacturer that had offices in Redford. Even though our offices were fairly close to downtown, the company put us up in the Westin during the Detroit Grand Prix race weekends.

It was a very nice property with a revolving restaurant at the top of the tower. The top two floors contain new restaurants and bars, but the revolving mechanism apparently no longer operates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Center#History

[BumRushDaShow]

26. I think I was there when it was still a Westin (it's been a long time)!

Although I think GM owns it now, when I was there I remember Ford has some kind of display of cars in there although I don't think that is there anymore.

I *think* the towers (including the hotel) also had some exterior glass-enclosed elevators to get a view of the skyline.

[A HERETIC I AM]

27. Yes on all points!

GM does indeed own it and uses it for their world headquarters. They moved from the old GM building on West Grand, now called Cadillac Place

I’m sure you saw a Ford display, as it seems to me that all of the Big Three have at one time or another displayed units inside the concourse/lobby level.

And it sure as hell had an elevator that had a glass front to take you to the revolving restaurant at the top!

[BumRushDaShow]

28. Okay thanks for confirming

I sortof chuckled at the Ford display because I grew up in 2 Ford station wagons, learned to drive in a Mercury Zephyr, and swore I would never buy a Ford (mostly due to the older carburetor system where the cars would continually stall - especially in spring and fall).

Fast forward years later and I ended up getting an Escape and later an Explorer. I have only owned American-made cars. Seeing the cars displayed there gave me the "Gee I really AM in Detroit" feeling. Motor city!

I never got chance to take the elevator up to the restaurant as I figured eating there would probably be outside of my per-diem), but did use it to go up/down to my room, that I *think* during a couple of my stays, was on the 25th and/or 26th floors, so the rooms had a great view too.

[brooklynite]

6. Why is this news?

I taught a class on social equity in transportation planning for five years.

FWIW - the issue wasn’t one of pure racism. It was one of picking neighborhoods that were poor and a “blight on the community” (which also didn’t have the organizational strength to oppose the plan). Those neighborhoods tended to be statistically black and Hispanic.

[LeftInTX]

8. I just posted that below..7

There are interstates all over the place, in rich and poor areas, however there are buffer zones in more affluent areas. It appears there was better planning in more affluent areas.

[pidge]

10. There were few Hispanic communities in most of the US in the 50s.

[BumRushDaShow]

11. This is not LBN.

It's an article.

But there will always be people who deny institutional racism and its effects including your very justification of "didn't have the organizational strength to oppose the plan" regarding the impacted communities. Many DID have that organization but during that time, they were the wrong race and had no power, and were given no options like actually be able to move to brand new developments in the suburbs, because it was understood that POC were nothing but a bunch of apes, and had nothing worthy to say or care about.

[Solomon]

32. Yep. I see the denials sprinkled throughout this thread.

There's always another reason.

[SaintLouisBlues]

34. It's called history. Is that OK with you?

[BannonsLiver]

40. "I taught a class on social equity in transportation planning for five years."

So that’s it, the class informed everyone and there’s no need to ever discuss it again?

[brooklynite]

41. Has some new development on this matter occurred to be newsworthy?

Otherwise, seems I’d that a national newspaper would bring up a story from 60 years ago.

[BannonsLiver]

42. Here again, not everyone was in the class you taught.

[BumRushDaShow]

45. I suppose you missed this paragraph right there in the OP article excerpt quoted?

I'll post the relevant portion again, but will separate it out and make it bold and underlined so that it can actually be "seen", because one often has to find ways to get around the fractious scotoma some have associated with what is apparently considered inconvenient and distracting HISTORY.

THIS is WHY it was published in a "national newspaper" and why the article included the historical background to give context -

“The problem was when you put in highways, you have to figure out where to put them.”Rectifying at least some of these past transgressions is a goal of the Biden administration’s massive infrastructure push, with billions of dollars proposed to “reconnect” communities and address historic inequities. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has acknowledged the “racism physically built into some of our highways” and the “lasting damage” suffered by the communities that were targeted. Many of those decisions were set in motion long before the interstates themselves, at a time when America was booming — and bursting at the seams.

Yours is a case of jumping right in attacking those pointing out racism and not bothering to read the article, which establishes why it was relevant TODAY. Or to put it simply - H.R.3684 - Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

https://apnews.com/article/senate-infrastructure-bill-politics-joe-biden-a431f8c9f3f113b661cb3526512fc4e0

[LeftInTX]

7. In San Antonio, they put I-35 South - straight through a neighbor

I-35 North, they put parallel to the railroad tracks.

So, on the south side, they have to deal with both RR tracks and 35..and neighborhoods are wedged in between. They obviously bulldozed homes to get 35 in there and they could have moved 35 over a to the west a few miles, so that it would run parallel to the tracks.

(Hwy 90 was not there until 1967 or so)....However, I always felt they cut through the neighborhood to save money. I feel like in other parts of town, residents complained about the upcoming freeway, so the PTB listened and created buffer zones and those buffer zones already existed next to RR tracks.

Another advantage of tracks were parallel to the interstate: there are also less RR crossings to deal with.


To be fair, there are interstates in poor and rich areas. However, in nicer areas, it appears that there was better planning involved.

It is very jarring to drive through the Palm Heights neighborhood on the southside. You have to deal with RR tracks, then another busy road, then the interstate that literally cuts through the neighborhood. The neighborhood feels very wedged in.

They could have planned better and put I-35 parallel to the tracks. I don't believe they purposely broke up the neighborhood.

At the time, the city was run by the Good Government league. City Council members were all elected "At Large", because of this, City Council consisted of white people from the northside. (Eventually with help from the Voting Rights Act, in 1975 the city was divided into 10 single member districts and things improved)

I think they went cheap on the southside.

Southside. RR tracks are at an angle on the west...35 goes straight N-S through a neighborhood


Northside: RR tracks are parallel to 35...

[SWBTATTReg]

9. Interstate highways are the bane of cities...they chop up the cities into little pieces,

thus reducing their political power too, in states (IMHO). It's like having massive walls dividing the cities into chunks. In some cities they have built the interstate highways upon elevated platforms, but like in St. Louis, MO, they are ground level and caused a lot of old historic buildings to be demolished/razed to make way. Entire neighborhoods got chopped up, or destroyed. A lot of ethic groups were impacted.

I find it rather ironic now, that now, these inner city corridors are now vibrant bastions of urban regrowth, attracting a wide mix of retired couples seeking a vibrant mix of urban life to spend their retirement years among a highly technical younger and middle-aged population, all for the most part, making a pretty decent living, propelling home prices ever upwards vs. rural areas that are stuck in feeble attempts to spur development, job growth, and better job pay.

Cities hold a substantial portion of the US population, thus they hold a substantial portion of spendable wealth, and hold incredible spending power. A big stick indeed. Perhaps instead of bad mouthing city populations for all of their ailments, rural populations could treat their city customers w/ respect, when they sell their cattle, pigs, produce, and all other kinds of farm/ranch outputs, in exchange for money or other manufactured goods that come out of city factories...

[Boomerproud]

12. Thank you.

I'm tired of rural moral superiority. Of course CNN was at the Iowa State Fair and had folks yammering about the guvmint et al. along with their election year dinner crowd.

[former9thward]

38. People in the cities would starve to death quicker without food from the rural areas.

It goes both ways.

[BumRushDaShow]

54. But what happened post-WW2

was the development of the "suburban developments", that were BUILT on what was formerly rural, food-producing land adjacent to the cities, and that served to move the "food" further and further away, literally isolating the rural communities from the urban ones, and causing a disconnect.

[crickets]

13. K&R for the post and the discussion.

[Hekate]

15. Fascinating stuff, some of which I knew and some of which I didn't. BTW, love the "rail parks"...

…. from the time I first heard about them, and hope to see some someday.

[BumRushDaShow]

21. In the past, the city was demolishing the old rail viaducts (overpasses)

but there has been a recent push to actually use them as a sort of pedestrian walkway over some of the busy, multi-lane streets that many of those rail overpasses cross over.

The one I included in the OP has some history about it here - https://www.therailpark.org/the-park/

One of the other things I saw that is being done was to convert old abandoned rail routes for pedestrian and bike trails (the old tracks are removed and trails are installed). Some more info on this here - https://www.railstotrails.org/greatamericanrailtrail/

ETA to add a map -

[Hekate]

22. Very cool. Downloaded.

[Solly Mack]

19. K&R

[leftstreet]

20. DURec

[obamanut2012]

39. There was a highway put in close to Yale for this reason

To keep blacks -- and some whites -- from being able to walk over to the Yale campus.

[leftstreet]

48. DURec

[FakeNoose]

50. Thanks for taking the time to post all this great info

BumRush - I always enjoy your posts, they're interesting and informative.

Thanks!

[BumRushDaShow]

55. I am hoping that President Biden can get both pieces of the Infrastructure legislation through

so that we can truly start to rebuild America - but this time MORE fairly.