Introduction
In the United States, Highways are the arteries of the nation. With this country’s distinct lack of public transit that is found in many other first-world nations, we are forced as a people to traverse unwalkable land in isolated boxes, spreading communities apart. When highways were built in the US, they were hailed as easy methods of fast transportation, connecting big cities and supporting the economic boom. But our arteries have long since been dying, becoming less and less useful as time goes on and straining the economy as well as the communities they claim to serve.
The Beginnings
When interstate highways were first built in America in 1956 under Eisenhower’s Federal-Aid Highway Act, their purpose was partly national defense—to transport troops and materials effectively in the event of a foreign invasion—and partly to support the national economy, connecting big cities and supplying materials across large distances to new building projects (Zug 126). However, the placement of these highways was not randomly chosen—many urban planners who decided on the location set the roads to run straight through poor communities, seeking to destroy ‘undesirable’ communities as a part of the 1950s and 60s policies of “slum clearance”. This led to the collapse of many cultures and thriving communities, such as Detroit’s ‘Black Bottom’ and Paradise Valley’—neighborhoods containing some of the city’s most crucial entertainment and cultural communities (Vejendla). As well as these groups in Detroit, another one of these destroyed neighborhoods is much closer to home. To make room for the construction of Interstate 81 in Syracuse, New York, developers leveled the ‘15th Ward’—a thriving intercultural and immigrant community that struggled to recover from its displacement and destruction. The highway has been described as a ‘scar on the heart’ of the community, physically segregating white and affluent neighborhoods from the older pioneer homes, which house a concentrated poverty-stricken minority population. Its construction destroyed a community, and even though the city plans to demolish the highway starting in 2026, it doesn’t mean that the area will recover.
Impact
The relationship between highways and the population they serve is far from a symbiotic one. In fact, highways in the United States have long been a parasite system, drawing resources from the environment around them, reducing quality of life and making cities unwalkable. As stated by Avichal Mahajan in “Highways and Segregation”, there are many “disamenities emanating from highways” that choke the environment around them. They create noise and air pollution due to the many cars, trucks, and transport using them daily, as well as splitting large areas of land that can no longer be travelled across by foot or bike. This leads to mass departure from areas where highways are constructed due to the undesirable conditions they create, leaving those too poor to move behind.
Demolition
Now that certain highways are creating more nuisance than benefit, certain cities are looking to tear down old ones in the hopes of improving the urban landscape and transportation. One such city is Syracuse. As of 2022, the New York State Department of Transportation began its I-81 project, after conducting a study of the corridor from 2008 to 2013. A large portion of the I-81 will be destroyed and replaced with ‘community-grid’ style roads, improving the area and reducing the risk of accidents. The main purpose of this demolition was not community connection, however—the goal was to replace damaged sections of the highway that have been affected by weather and created dangerous conditions over the years. And in destroying this 60 year-old highway, the city will not be patching the 60 years of separation and isolation created by its existence. Even in attempting to fix the problems created long ago through the parasitic placement of these highways through certain communities, these cities do not acknowledge the dead cultures left behind in the rubble of the destroyed highway, never to be rejoined again. Though the current mayor of Syracuse has said that the highway’s demolition is “an opportunity to knit back the fabric of our cities and to bring people together”, true integration and connection will take much longer to re-form than the time it takes to change the transportation method through the city. The community might improve and the area may seem more open and safe, but if we continue to focus on urban planning purely through the lens of economic development and efficiency rather than taking a human and community-centric view, our built environment will continue to separate and divide us into isolated, systematic factory workers, disconnected from our neighbors and serving our country through work.
Zug, Charles U. “the historical presidency: ‘giving government to business’: Dwight Eisenhower and the Federal Highway Act.” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 1, 9 Feb. 2023, pp. 120–136, https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12816.
Vejendla, Nithin. “Freeways Are Detroit’s Most Enduring Monuments to Racism. Let’s Excise Them.: Opinion.” Detroit Free Press, Detroit Free Press, 5 July 2020, www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2020/07/05/detroit-freeways-racism-segregati on-white-flight/5366081002/.
Mahajan, Avichal. “Highways and segregation.” Journal of Urban Economics, vol. 141, May 2024, p. 103574, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2023.103574.