Through the years that she has been fighting against it, Amy Stelly’s opponent has remained unmoved, looming nearby and covering her New Orleans home with filth: an elevated highway, towering above her once-thriving neighbourhood.
Since its construction in the 1960s, the section of Interstate 10 running above Claiborne Avenue has decimated what used to be the centre of the city’s black community, said Stelly, including businesses and greenery.
Once a bustling retail corridor shaded by mature oak trees, the street satisfied all of the community’s needs, the designer and urban planner said. “Doctors, dentists, groceries. It was the place to be.”
“Over time, the neighbourhood became disinvested and businesses closed,” said Stelly, who has been called a “freeway fighter” for her decade-long struggle to get the city to remove the elevated interstate entirely and reroute traffic.
Now her battle is getting a boost from President Joe Biden’s new infrastructure package, which brings high-level attention to the effects of urban highways.
The announcement of the plan in March referenced the need to redress historical infrastructure inequities, specifically calling out how “past transportation investments divided communities – like the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans”.
Biden’s new transportation secretary, former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg, noted in December that highway projects had had a disproportionate impact on minority communities, pledging to “make righting these wrongs an imperative”.
Earlier that month, members of Congress had proposed $10bn to facilitate highway removals or redesigns as part of a broader economic justice bill.
“There’s never been explicit presidential support for something like this,” said Ben Crowther, programme manager at the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), a Washington DC-based nonprofit that tracks highway removals.
If funding was made available “exclusively for removing highways and righting the historical wrongs they’ve perpetuated”, he said, “that would tip the scales in favour of a lot more removal projects”.
‘Overtly racist’
The history of highway removal begins with the story of highway building during the 1950s and 1960s, which often meant slicing through communities of colour, Crowther said.
“Some were overtly racist, some were systemically racist. That included the fact that this was low-value land, in part because black people were living there,” he said.
Those highways brought with them significant health risks, including higher rates of cardiovascular disease, cancer and asthma, according to a report by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
“Freeway construction in many US cities caused homes and businesses to be demolished; limited access to housing, services, jobs and open space; and polluted air, soil and water,” the report found.
Addressing these issues today can include capping or burying highways, rerouting them to less densely inhabited areas or even removing spur highways – which branch off of major roadways – and other infrastructure entirely.
“It would be a tragedy if the people we were trying to help by taking (highways) down ended up getting priced out afterward.
— Ben Crowther, CNU programme manager
According to CNU’s count, about 18 US highways have been removed in some form since the late 1970s, with a significant spike in the past five years.
Drive times have typically gone up by only a few minutes, Crowther said, despite critics’ predictions of traffic-related “Armageddon”.
The momentum for such projects typically comes from mayors, but they are now being helped by the advanced age of the national highway system, said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America, an advocacy group.
“All of these highways need to be completely replaced at this point, so it’s a good time to talk about it and think differently today than we did in previous decades,” she said.
Safeguarding locals
Communities where highways have been removed benefit from better air quality, new green and public space, stronger physical connection with neighbouring areas, and significant local economic development, Osborne and others said.
Greenville, South Carolina, took down a four-lane bridge in the early 2000s and uncovered a waterfall, then created a park around it that made the neighbourhood a major draw, said Alex Laska, transportation policy adviser with the think-tank Third Way.
And Crowther at CNU pointed to Rochester, New York, which spent $22m to fill in part of its inner loop highway in 2017, reclaiming 6.5 acres of land.
Within two years, the city had generated investments worth $229m in development off of that land, he said.
Yet in spurring new economic development, some highway removal projects have inadvertently pushed out longtime residents, Crowther added.
He noted the experience of Oakland, California, where a highway relocation in the 1990s fuelled gentrification and displacement.
Many advocates want to ensure that mistake is not repeated, said Laska at Third Way.
“It would be a tragedy if the people we were trying to help by taking (highways) down ended up getting priced out afterward,” he said.
In December, amid the new federal focus on highway removals, Laska and Osborne collaborated on a report to help communities and officials get ahead of the issue.
The proposal includes having communities establish land trusts or “land banks” that could receive initial ownership of any property that becomes available, which in turn would help support affordable housing or new small businesses.
Proceeds from property sales could help other local homeowners pay the increase in property taxes due to gentrification, Laska said.
Lawmakers have expressed interest in adding such elements to future legislation, he noted.
In New Orleans, the prospect that gentrification could follow if she succeeds in getting the Claiborne Expressway removed already has Stelly worried.
“I’ve said to the city that we need to work on equity now, not when the highway is down,” she said.
Stelly suggests tax relief for longtime residents, incentives to encourage black businesses to move into the area, and zoning changes to allow for the construction of smaller buildings that could be more affordable to new business owners.
A New Orleans city hall spokesperson said that the mayor and city “appreciate the Biden administration’s acknowledgment of the devastation to surrounding African-American businesses” caused by the construction of the elevated highway.
“Since taking office, our administration has focused on improving the city’s ageing infrastructure, and doing so in a manner responsive to the needs of all of our residents,” the spokesperson said.
Already the discussion has moved far more quickly than Stelly anticipated.
“Highway removal is now glamorous – I never thought I’d see that,” she said.
“For neighbourhoods that have been destroyed by urban highways all across the US, there’s hope that the environmental, social and economic injustices can be reversed now.”
– Reuters
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