Camara says her parents moved to another Shreveport neighborhood, Allendale, where she still lives when she was a baby. But now her current home is in danger of becoming a bulldozer, allowing a second highway, Interstate 49, to connect directly through the city.
The leaders of Shreveport who want to trade Camara’s home for a highway accept a belief in the Dwight Eisenhower era 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, the Eisenhower highways were an interest driven by the heart of healthy cities.
Now many of these urban highways are crumbling, and groundwater has sprung up in cities nationwide to break it down. According to Ben Crowther, the leader of the, there are 30 local, civic campaigns to persuade officials to remove highways “highways to boulevards” program at the Congress for New Urbanism, a brainstorming session dedicated to walkable urban environments. A Senate bill introduced last year called for $ 10 billion to be spent on urban highway removal. Even Detroit, perhaps the U.S. city most driven by cars, is considering removing a highway.
“Now, more than ever before, in the Covid era, people are reconsidering how streets and the infrastructure around the people serve in cities,” Crowther told CNN Business.
Activists see the removal of highway projects as a role in racial justice and in making a kind of correction for families displaced decades ago, such as that of Camara.
The U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, is one of those who spoke out about the history of black neighborhoods being disproportionately divided by highway projects, and called for to correct the injustice.
But experts believe that replacing urban highways with boulevards offers no guarantee of racial justice, and that it could exacerbate the danger. Rising land values can cause gentrification, damaging the color communities that were already damaged when the highways were first built.
“We need to think about doing not just ‘let’s get to a boulevard’, but also a moment of restorative justice for the people who have suffered, as well as some protection and prevention for the people who are still there. is, “said Calvin Gladney, CEO of Smart Growth America, a community development organization.
The environment that was
Kenneth Cox, 87, of Detroit, remembers hearing a young Aretha Franklin sing from her father in the New Bethel Baptist Church. located in the vicinity of Black Bottom. He told CNN Business how he visited the indoor skating rink in the area and loved the vanilla ice cream at Barthwell, a chain of drug stores.
“It was a black business mecca,” recalls Cox of Black Bottom, whose Gotham Hotel, a sought-after destination, attracted stars such as Louie Armstrong and Duke Ellington.
But when the Interstate Highway System was mapped, Black Bottom was in its infancy.
There were no blacks people in the then Detroit City Council, according to Jamon Jordan, a Detroit historian. The five-person housing commission in the city had a single black member, who, according to Jordan, soon resigned in protest.
Black Bottom was pushed into the 1960s to make way for Interstate 375.
Fast forward to today, and Detroit and the state of Michigan plan to demolish Interstate 375 and switch to a boulevard. But for many Detroiters, the project has nothing to do with restoring the past.
PG Watkins, the leader of Black Bottom Archives, which describes the history of Detroit, says some residents welcome the removal to make the neighborhood flourish again, and others believe the project is not being done for Black Detroit, but white residents who may intrek.
“A lot of people are like ‘We just have to be honest about why this is actually happening,'” Watkins said.
Detroit Councilwoman Mary Sheffield, who represents neighborhoods near I-375, described the project to CNN Business as an attempt by planners to attract another section of society that has not been a city resident in recent history. was not. ‘
Stephanie Chang, a Michigan senator who interviewed residents in largely black neighborhoods near I-375, found that most do not want to remove the highway.
A Michigan Department of Transportation spokesman, who is leading the project, told CNN Business that the project is not about gentrification, but about mobility.
“It takes a 60-year-old highway with outdated interchanges, weakened bridges and sidewalks, and finds a suitable solution that takes safety, operation and improved connectivity into account for all users,” said spokesman Rob Morosi.
The department is working with the Detroit City Government, he added, which has programs and policies to address rising property values.
A spokesman for Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan asked about steps to make sure the I-375 project benefits from nearby Black residents who may be at risk of gentrification, and suggests that the project not be so a case is not.
“The proposed 375 project does not involve the displacement of people – it does involve the possible displacement of a commuter road by a surface road,” Mayor John Roach, a spokesman, said in an email. “I am not aware that the possible commuter facility is a recognized form of gentrification.”
But the Michigan Department of Transportation said property values and rents in residential areas near I-375 could rise, suggesting the project could cause gentrification. The spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on the department’s findings.
Gentrification is apparently on Buttigieg’s radar, but how he will address it is unclear.
“There was a legacy of misguided investment and missed opportunities in federal transportation policies that exacerbate racial and economic inequality,” Buttigieg said in a statement to CNN Business. “We need to make sure that these mistakes are not repeated in projects that are currently underway.”
Buttigieg did not want to outline specific steps he recommends to take to prevent further damage to communities already negatively affected by highways.
Nor would he say whether he would intervene and halt the I-49 project in Shreveport, which is awaiting federal government approval. But he said projects in the pipeline are being evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine if the department can intervene to address the concerns of communities.
Jordan, the Detroit historian, finds that few people know the history of Black Bottom and Detroit’s Black businesses and institutions when he gives tours or lectures. He was used to hearing from people who heard that ‘black people had messed up the city’, he said – a belief that the city was great when Henry Ford was in Detroit, and that things were great until the blacks took over the city.
He called on the government to reach out to black businesses that were damaged when the neighborhood was destroyed over 60 years ago so they can be among the beneficiaries of the redevelopment. And Jordan added that a historic marker and a a community center is to be built in the new neighborhood to inform people about Black Bottom.
“There has to be some kind of acknowledgment of what happened,” Jordan said. “Some have to master this story.”