The “no highways in rich areas” is classic in central CT. The “beltway” around Hartford was completed in all the poor areas, and not one inch was built in a rich area—and has remained in this status for fifty years!
The result is flyover exit ramps to nowhere.
Some pigs are more equal than others.
The early highway builders would have done well to have given stronger preference to the low hanging fruit during both the planning and construction phases — swamplands, uninhabited forests, abandoned industrial sites — before tackling the areas where anyone with common sense could have foreseen controversy. For the latter they ought to have developed more effective strategies for “gingerly” road building. They didn’t, and the new rule of thumb is: highways just don’t get built.