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Highways that destroyed Black neighborhoods are crumbling. Some want to undo that legacy
Channel 3000 ^ | February 27, 2021 | CNN

Posted on 04/01/2021 10:14:06 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks

(CNN) — Njeri Camara, 61, can’t visit the Shreveport, Louisiana home where she was born. Like many Black homes and neighborhoods across the country in the 1960s, it was bulldozed to clear space for highways.

Camara says her parents moved when she was a baby to another Shreveport neighborhood, Allendale, where she still lives. But now her current home is at risk of being bulldozed so that a second highway, Interstate 49, can connect directly through the city.

The Shreveport leaders who want to trade Camara’s home for a highway are embracing a Dwight Eisenhower-era belief in the almighty good of the Interstate Highway System. The sentiment lingers even decades after the underbelly of urban highways became clear: pollution, noise, racism, displacement and congestion. For critics, Eisenhower’s highways were a stake driven through the heart of healthy cities.

Now many of these urban highways are crumbling, and a groundswell has emerged in cities nationwide to tear them down. There are 30 local, citizen-led campaigns to convince officials to remove highways, according to Ben Crowther, who leads the “highways to boulevards” program at the Congress for New Urbanism, a think tank devoted to walkable urban environments. A Senate bill introduced last year called for $10 billion to be spent on urban highway removals. Even Detroit, perhaps the most car-dominated US city, is considering removing a stretch of highway.

“Now more than ever, in the age of Covid, people are rethinking how streets and the infrastructure around them serves the people who live in cities,” Crowther told CNN Business.

Activists see highway removal projects as playing a role in racial justice, and making some sort of amends for families displaced decades ago, like Camara’s.

(Excerpt) Read more at channel3000.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Health/Medicine; History; Local News; Miscellaneous; Outdoors; Society; Travel
KEYWORDS: blackbottom; construction; destruction; detroit; freeways; history; infrastructure; louisiana; michigan; neighborhoods; njericamara; petebuttigieg; racerelations; racism; restitution; shacks; shreveport; shreverport; teardowns; transportation
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1 posted on 04/01/2021 10:14:06 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
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To: BobL; sphinx; GreenLanternCorps; oldvirginian; Haiku Guy; napscoordinator; ConservativeInPA; ...

PING!


2 posted on 04/01/2021 10:15:14 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (GOP-free since 10/9/20)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Just another way to weaken the United States, fund leftists, and discriminate against rural Americans.


3 posted on 04/01/2021 10:20:33 AM PDT by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries. )
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks
"Let's remove these eyesore, crumbling highways. They are racist!"

"But we are going to spend tens of billions of dollars to renovate them in the new bill in congress."

"Highways are all racist! Spend the money on local social programs for people of color."

Don't you just love it?

4 posted on 04/01/2021 10:23:54 AM PDT by 17th Miss Regt
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Our drivers Hate going through Shreveport - that is usually the last load taken. Even the guys from the South say the place is too damn dangerous.


5 posted on 04/01/2021 10:25:15 AM PDT by EC Washington
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Drive through the city on Martin Luther King Boulevard or take the bypass around the city and drive an extra 30 miles?

Pretty easy decision.

6 posted on 04/01/2021 10:26:19 AM PDT by KarlInOhio (The greatest threat to world freedom is the Chinese Communist Party and Joe Biden is their puppet.)
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To: 17th Miss Regt

Everything is racist, from Wonderbread to my very existance as a White man.


7 posted on 04/01/2021 10:26:48 AM PDT by Eagles6 (Welcome to the Matrix circa 1984.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Got it? Highways are racist. Why do they call it “blacktop?”

Its obvious, isn’t it? to oppress people of color


8 posted on 04/01/2021 10:28:03 AM PDT by PGR88
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

I-375 from I-75 to Jefferson Avenue in Detroit doesn’t serve any real good purpose. It would open up a lot of real estate. They could put Hastings Street back in and open some jazz and blues venues - maybe a hotel or two.


9 posted on 04/01/2021 10:28:14 AM PDT by Larry Lucido (Donate! Don't just post clickbait!)
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To: 17th Miss Regt

When the Mass Pike,I 90,was completed it went through affluent towns.....some people wat to make a racial issue about everything.....I am so sick of it.

..


10 posted on 04/01/2021 10:31:13 AM PDT by Mears (.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks
“highways to boulevards” program at the Congress for New Urbanism, a think tank devoted to walkable urban environments. A Senate bill introduced last year called for $10 billion to be spent on urban highway removals. Even Detroit, perhaps the most car-dominated US city, is considering removing a stretch of highway.

“Now more than ever, in the age of Covid, people are rethinking how streets and the infrastructure around them serves the people who live in cities,”

6 lanes out in every direction and only 2 lanes in.

I thought that the 2020 riots and COVID had put a stake in the heart of the new urbanism. Detroit could get by with a dirt road just so long as I-275 and I-696 survive.

11 posted on 04/01/2021 10:31:48 AM PDT by KarlInOhio (The greatest threat to world freedom is the Chinese Communist Party and Joe Biden is their puppet.)
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To: Mears
some people want to make a racial issue about everything.....I am so sick of it.

No kidding, enough is enough.

12 posted on 04/01/2021 10:33:06 AM PDT by 1Old Pro
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

How ‘bout let the locals decide?


13 posted on 04/01/2021 10:33:07 AM PDT by Little Ray (The Government is always its own largest and most important Special Interest. .)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Yeah. They bulldozed plenty of white neighborhoods too. More than Blacks.


14 posted on 04/01/2021 10:36:55 AM PDT by Seruzawa (The political Left is the Garden of Eden of Incompetence - Marx the Smarter (Groucho))
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks
I am so mentally exhausted with the American mainstream media's constant black news coverage. Sometimes I just want to immigrate to whatever native English-speaking country has the lowest percentage of blacks in its national population. I know that's bad to say, but I'm just so over it...


15 posted on 04/01/2021 10:39:06 AM PDT by Trump20162020
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Yeah let’s see them tearing down Martin Luther King boulevard in some of these hellholes.


16 posted on 04/01/2021 10:40:28 AM PDT by plain talk
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

I think we’ve seen peak traffic. Telecommuting, virtual shopping, robotaxis, fine grained mass transit, etc. will cause reduced traffic in many, many ways.


17 posted on 04/01/2021 10:43:32 AM PDT by Born to Conserve
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

More grift for the NGOs.


18 posted on 04/01/2021 10:43:49 AM PDT by Seruzawa (The political Left is the Garden of Eden of Incompetence - Marx the Smarter (Groucho))
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Like many Black homes and neighborhoods across the country in the 1960s, it was bulldozed to clear space for highways.

"White homes" were bulldozed in the 1960s for the Long Island Expressway and Cross-Bronx Expressway and many other roads. What utter bullshit.

19 posted on 04/01/2021 10:46:19 AM PDT by montag813 ("Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the Great")
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

I wonder what happened to Camera’s brothers, Microwave and Clock?


20 posted on 04/01/2021 10:46:29 AM PDT by enumerated
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