Maryland Lawmakers Seek to Reconnect Communities Divided by Highways

Maryland Matters ^ | April 28, 2021 | Bruce DePuyt

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Baltimore has its Highway to Nowhere, a road that gobbled up communities before the project was abandoned.

Wilmington, Del., had neighborhoods wiped out by Interstate 95.

Thousands of Detroit residents lost their homes — and surviving communities were scarred — by the construction of Interstate 375.

The Overtown neighborhood in Miami, a majority-Black community, was “flattened,” also by I-95, forcing 10,000 people to leave their homes.

In Nashville, bulldozers demolished 620 houses, 27 apartment buildings and six Black churches to make way for the I-40 expressway.

All across the nation, American communities bear the scars of the headlong rush to expand the interstate highway system, mostly in the 1950s and 60s.

In many American cities, the federal government erected roads designed primarily to bring mostly White suburban professionals into urban job centers — slitting established Black neighborhoods in the process.

Many communities have never recovered, scholars and planners say.

U.S. Reps. Anthony G. Brown and Kweisi Mfume and Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Benjamin L. Cardin, who are all Maryland Democrats, are among federal lawmakers seeking to undo some of the damage.

Spurred on by U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has spotlighted the devastating impact the federal highway system has had on communities of color, Brown and the other lawmakers have introduced legislation to “reconnect” communities divided by elevated freeways.

The bill they’re backing would provide funding to remove and “retrofit” what they call “historic infrastructure barriers.”

“We have an opportunity to transform our infrastructure and invest in the transportation future of every community, with equity and justice at the forefront of our efforts. Communities of color have been chronically underinvested in and deliberately harmed by exclusionary infrastructure and transportation policies,” said Brown, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, in a statement.

[Clemenza]

The Overtown neighborhood in Miami, a majority-Black community, was “flattened,” also by I-95, forcing 10,000 people to leave their homes.

And they moved to NW Dade County to better housing in Miami Gardens and Carol City.

[rxh4n1]

East Tremont in the Bronx (The Cross-Bronx Expy), East Orange in NJ (I-280), and Clevelands West Side (I-90) had interstates blasted through. East Tremont and East Orange were pretty much ruined. So it’s not just minorities there hurt.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Haven’t we heard story after woke story that ‘forcing’ blacks to live near freeways was racist? That living near freeways affected the health of those living near them?

Critical Race Theory: made for people who cannot handle logic. :-)

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Thank goodness interstates only go through cities and not rural areas or farms or ranches. They weren’t affected at all.

That's entirely correct. Why, they even have ranch exits out west!

Oh, wait. That means they DID go through farms and ranches!