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*Social engineers built freeways because it was a convenient way to raze minority neighborhoods while subsidizing suburbs that were care-dependent largely in or

*Social engineers built freeways because it was a convenient way to raze minority neighborhoods while subsidizing suburbs that were care-dependent largely in order to limit who could move there by class. It's important to tell the full story because similar dynamics drive our current stumbling blocks.

rayiner 2y ago
That’s obviously coincidental. Many countries (and even parts of the US) that have no minorities to oppress developed car-dependent suburbs around the same time.
- underlipton 2y ago
  I can't tell if you're being facetious or not. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00225266231190177?icid=int.sj-abstract.similar-articles.9 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00225266231190177?i... https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3797364# https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3797364#
  - rayiner 2y ago
    Those articles don’t support the point you made above. They show that minority neighborhoods were razed to build freeways. That’s true—for the same reason chemical plants and power stations are disproportionately built near places where minorities live. But razing minority neighborhoods isn’t the reason people build chemical and power plants. That’s just the easiest way to build things people want to build for other reasons. Likewise, people didn’t build highways for the purpose of razing minority neighborhoods. They wanted the highways, and it was easier to build them through poor neighborhoods than to build them through richer ones. Again, European cities did or tried to do many of the same things as American cities in terms of building freeways: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/motorway-removed-to-bring-back-original-water/ https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/motorway-remov.... Cities like Seattle and Portland that had virtually no minorities in the 1960s also built freeways through downtown. The existence of minorities isn’t what caused people to build those freeways. That’s like saying wet streets cause rain.
    - underlipton 2y ago
      You need to read them again. They explain that the overarching purpose of urban renewal/the ISHS was to transfer wealth from black urbanites to newly-crowned white suburbanites. The highways would not have been built if they couldn't raze poor and/or black or minority neighborhoods (it should be noted that many were thriving economically, if unconnected politically), as the contemporary NIMBY-won fights that kill public transit project after project show. Europe's situation is different for several reasons, including the pre-automobile "urban renewal" of many cities in the late 19th century (the displacement of "slum" inhabitants being now outside of living memory) that has been preserved in contemporary layouts, the complete destruction of many cities during WWII (precluding "slum" clearance), and the robust anti-freeway movements in several cities, particularly Copenhagen. You are categorically wrong about Seattle: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/5bbc63a6ef9d45f787f4bde2b1cc2629 https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/5bbc63a6ef9d45f787f4bde... >Robert Moses, the construction coordinator of New York City and an influential urban planner, believed that highways should be built in order to destroy black neighborhoods. "Our categorical imperative is action to clear the slums," he said in 1959. >Seattle's highway planners took Moses's idea to heart. They placed the intersection and interchange of two major planned freeways, the I-90 and the RH Thomson in the center of the Judkins Park neighborhood of the Central District which was 85% black at the time. >the urban renewal project and the placement of the freeways was a deliberate plan to destroy Black Seattle and eviscerate an area seen by white Seattleites as a ghetto. And also Portland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albina,_Portland,_Oregon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albina,_Portland,_Oregon https://web.archive.org/web/20210516160733/https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/usp_fac/286/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210516160733/https://pdxschola... https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/black-history/black-community-portland-albina-neighborhood/283-85a7ebf4-30ca-4617-bd10-839030f654da https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/black-history/black-c... You need to do more research. You are horribly misinformed.
      - rayiner 2y ago
        > You need to read them again. They explain that the overarching purpose of urban renewal/the ISHS was to transfer wealth from black urbanites to newly-crowned white suburbanites. They don’t say that. The two academic papers you linked say that was their effect. And the blog posts you linked above don’t offer any proof for their assertions of motivation. For example, the article about Seattle cites statements by Robert Moses in New York City with no attempt to connect the two. > The highways would not have been built if they couldn't raze poor and/or black or minority neighborhoods (it should be noted that many were thriving economically, if unconnected politically), Again, we know that’s not true because highways were built through cities that had no significant minority populations. What minorities were they trying to oppress when they built freeways through Düsseldorf? https://twitter.com/SDuct/status/1456590650112159746 https://twitter.com/SDuct/status/1456590650112159746. What minorities are they trying to oppress in Cairo where they’re building freeways through downtown? https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/10/08/egypt-is-busily-building-expressways https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/10/08/.... Japan built expressways through Tokyo—one of the most racially homogenous large cities in the world—in the 1950s as well: https://tourism-road.or.jp/drive_guide_en/%E3%81%93%E3%81%93%E3%81%AB%E6%AD%A3%E8%A6%8F%E5%8C%96%E3%81%99%E3%82%8BURL https://tourism-road.or.jp/drive_guide_en/%E3%81%93%E3%81%93.... Who were they trying to oppress? You’re the one who is horribly misinformed, trying to project an America-centric racial narrative onto something that was a global phenomenon driven by people’s preferences for the low density living enabled by cars.

rayiner 2y ago

That’s obviously coincidental. Many countries (and even parts of the US) that have no minorities to oppress developed car-dependent suburbs around the same time.

underlipton 2y ago
I can't tell if you're being facetious or not. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00225266231190177?icid=int.sj-abstract.similar-articles.9 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00225266231190177?i... https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3797364# https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3797364#
- rayiner 2y ago
  Those articles don’t support the point you made above. They show that minority neighborhoods were razed to build freeways. That’s true—for the same reason chemical plants and power stations are disproportionately built near places where minorities live. But razing minority neighborhoods isn’t the reason people build chemical and power plants. That’s just the easiest way to build things people want to build for other reasons. Likewise, people didn’t build highways for the purpose of razing minority neighborhoods. They wanted the highways, and it was easier to build them through poor neighborhoods than to build them through richer ones. Again, European cities did or tried to do many of the same things as American cities in terms of building freeways: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/motorway-removed-to-bring-back-original-water/ https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/motorway-remov.... Cities like Seattle and Portland that had virtually no minorities in the 1960s also built freeways through downtown. The existence of minorities isn’t what caused people to build those freeways. That’s like saying wet streets cause rain.
  - underlipton 2y ago
    You need to read them again. They explain that the overarching purpose of urban renewal/the ISHS was to transfer wealth from black urbanites to newly-crowned white suburbanites. The highways would not have been built if they couldn't raze poor and/or black or minority neighborhoods (it should be noted that many were thriving economically, if unconnected politically), as the contemporary NIMBY-won fights that kill public transit project after project show. Europe's situation is different for several reasons, including the pre-automobile "urban renewal" of many cities in the late 19th century (the displacement of "slum" inhabitants being now outside of living memory) that has been preserved in contemporary layouts, the complete destruction of many cities during WWII (precluding "slum" clearance), and the robust anti-freeway movements in several cities, particularly Copenhagen. You are categorically wrong about Seattle: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/5bbc63a6ef9d45f787f4bde2b1cc2629 https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/5bbc63a6ef9d45f787f4bde... >Robert Moses, the construction coordinator of New York City and an influential urban planner, believed that highways should be built in order to destroy black neighborhoods. "Our categorical imperative is action to clear the slums," he said in 1959. >Seattle's highway planners took Moses's idea to heart. They placed the intersection and interchange of two major planned freeways, the I-90 and the RH Thomson in the center of the Judkins Park neighborhood of the Central District which was 85% black at the time. >the urban renewal project and the placement of the freeways was a deliberate plan to destroy Black Seattle and eviscerate an area seen by white Seattleites as a ghetto. And also Portland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albina,_Portland,_Oregon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albina,_Portland,_Oregon https://web.archive.org/web/20210516160733/https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/usp_fac/286/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210516160733/https://pdxschola... https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/black-history/black-community-portland-albina-neighborhood/283-85a7ebf4-30ca-4617-bd10-839030f654da https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/black-history/black-c... You need to do more research. You are horribly misinformed.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      > You need to read them again. They explain that the overarching purpose of urban renewal/the ISHS was to transfer wealth from black urbanites to newly-crowned white suburbanites. They don’t say that. The two academic papers you linked say that was their effect. And the blog posts you linked above don’t offer any proof for their assertions of motivation. For example, the article about Seattle cites statements by Robert Moses in New York City with no attempt to connect the two. > The highways would not have been built if they couldn't raze poor and/or black or minority neighborhoods (it should be noted that many were thriving economically, if unconnected politically), Again, we know that’s not true because highways were built through cities that had no significant minority populations. What minorities were they trying to oppress when they built freeways through Düsseldorf? https://twitter.com/SDuct/status/1456590650112159746 https://twitter.com/SDuct/status/1456590650112159746. What minorities are they trying to oppress in Cairo where they’re building freeways through downtown? https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/10/08/egypt-is-busily-building-expressways https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/10/08/.... Japan built expressways through Tokyo—one of the most racially homogenous large cities in the world—in the 1950s as well: https://tourism-road.or.jp/drive_guide_en/%E3%81%93%E3%81%93%E3%81%AB%E6%AD%A3%E8%A6%8F%E5%8C%96%E3%81%99%E3%82%8BURL https://tourism-road.or.jp/drive_guide_en/%E3%81%93%E3%81%93.... Who were they trying to oppress? You’re the one who is horribly misinformed, trying to project an America-centric racial narrative onto something that was a global phenomenon driven by people’s preferences for the low density living enabled by cars.