Decades of highway construction and community destruction

As one proof point, Buttigieg spoke about urban planner Robert Moses, who for more than four decades, starting in the 1920s, oversaw the design and construction of roadways, bridges, parks

and housing projects throughout New York City and several neighboring counties. Moses’ projects are estimated to have displaced at least 250,000 Black and Latino residents and directed

heavily polluting traffic through their neighborhoods. By building highways _through_ the city rather than _around_ it, Moses leveled neighborhoods he deemed to be slums. Among his many

simultaneously held positions was the chairman of the New York City Slum Clearance Committee. (Aside from the lasting impact of his projects, Moses continues to be a presence today due to

both _The Power Broker_, the still-popular 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of him by historian Robert Caro, and the off-Broadway play _Straight Line Crazy_, starring acclaimed actor

Ralph Fiennes.) "TOO OFTEN, PAST TRANSPORTATION INVESTMENTS DIVIDED COMMUNITIES — LIKE THE CLAIBORNE EXPRESSWAY IN NEW ORLEANS OR I-81 IN SYRACUSE — OR IT LEFT OUT THE PEOPLE MOST IN

NEED OF AFFORDABLE TRANSPORTATION OPTIONS. IN PARTICULAR, SIGNIFICANT PORTIONS OF THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM WERE BUILT THROUGH BLACK NEIGHBORHOODS. THE DEAL CREATES A FIRST-EVER PROGRAM

TO RECONNECT COMMUNITIES DIVIDED BY TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE. THE PROGRAM WILL FUND PLANNING, DESIGN, DEMOLITION, AND RECONSTRUCTION OF STREET GRIDS, PARKS, OR OTHER INFRASTRUCTURE

THROUGH $1 BILLION OF DEDICATED FUNDING." _— The White House, "Fact Sheet: Historic Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal" _ But even before the 1956 highway act and the resulting

"urban renewal” projects embraced by local leaders and influencers, race played a factor in determining where roads were built, or not. Richard Rothstein, author of _The Color of Law: A

Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America_, points to the Federal Housing Administration (established in 1934 and a precursor to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban

Development) as an integral player in the encouragement and promotion of segregationist practices. In an arcane document called the _Underwriting Manual_, the FHA stated, “incompatible

racial groups should not be permitted to live in the same communities." The manual goes on to recommend using highways to separate white and Black communities. Anthony Foxx, a North

Carolina native and the secretary of Transportation during President Barack Obama’s second term, experienced the impact of racially biased highway construction while growing up in a Black

neighborhood cordoned off by two interstate highways. "I didn't realize it as a kid," Foxx recalled in a 2016 NPR interview. "I didn't think about it as economic

barriers, psychological barriers, but they were, and the choices of where that infrastructure was placed in my community as it turns out weren't unique to Charlotte." Another

commonality among the communities with highways running through them are the dangers faced by pedestrians. As noted in Smart Growth America's "Dangerous by Design" report for

2022, people of color are overrepresented in the percentage of pedestrian deaths in the U.S., despite making up a smaller proportion of the overall population.  "Although people of all

ages, races, income levels, and abilities are affected by dangerous street design, certain populations bear the brunt of the burden," states the report on page 33. "People of

color, low-income residents, and older adults are much more likely to die while walking, and the many people who exist at the intersections of these identities are even more vulnerable.

Decades of structural racism have included prioritizing travel to and from wealthier, whiter communities, forced displacement, disinvestment or neglect, a focus on building new rather than

repair, and spending a greater share of transportation dollars elsewhere. The results have been a greater share of poorly designed streets that lack even the most basic pedestrian safety

features like crosswalks, signals, and refuges, and are frequently divided by wide, highspeed roads that create life-threatening conflicts for people walking.” REPAIR AND RECONNECTIONS The

Biden administration, and notably the Department of Transportation, has made it a priority to both repair and improve the nation’s transportation and community infrastructure while also

addressing the legacy of the federal highway system’s impact on communities whose progress was stunted or outright destroyed. Within the infrastructure and jobs legislation passed by the

117th Congress and signed by Biden is the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program, which designates that $1 billion must go to communities unfairly burdened by highway development. Some of

the money will go toward remediation, and that work is already happening in nearly two dozen cities, including Denver, Colorado; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Long Beach, California; Detroit, Michigan;

and Rochester, New York. (See the “Before the Highway” interviews with two Rochester residents.) With the Federal-Aid Highway Act nearing its 70th anniversary, fewer and fewer women and men

remain who have experienced life in their neighborhoods “before the highway.” Follow the links below to hear and learn from seven residents — ranging in age from 58 to 80-plus — who remember

what happened and know what they, their families and their communities lost.   MORE 'BEFORE THE HIGHWAY' ARTICLES VISIT THE "BEFORE THE HIGHWAY" LANDING PAGE FOR

INTERVIEWS WITH IMPACTED COMMUNITIES IN FLORIDA, MINNESOTA, NEW YORK, OHIO, TENNESSEE AND TEXAS. SEE THE "BEFORE THE HIGHWAY: LEARN MORE" PAGE FOR LINKS TO ARTICLES, VIDEOS,

HISTORIES AND MORE ABOUT THE COMMUNITIES IMPACTED BY THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM.  ABOUT THE AUTHORS _ JIMMIE BRIGGS is a documentary storyteller, writer and advocate for racial and gender

equity. He is the co-founder and executive director emeritus of Man Up Campaign, a global initiative to activate youth to stop violence against women and girls, and the author of Innocents

Lost: When Child Soldiers Go To War (Basic Books, 2005). A native Missourian, his next book is an oral history of Ferguson, Missouri, in the wake of the 2014 police killing of teenager

Michael Brown Jr. Briggs’s articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Huffington Post, and The Root, among other publications. _ _MELISSA STANTON, is a senior advisor at AARP and

the editor of AARP.org/Livable and the AARP Livable Communities initiative's print publications and weekly e-newsletter. She is the author of two books (one about parenting, the other a

chlidren's picture book) and has written for the New York Times, The Atlantic and People, among other publications. She and Jimmie Briggs worked together many years ago when she was an

editor and he a reporter at Time Inc. magazines. _ _Page published February 1, 2023_