Highways: The Great Divider

    Highways and the Interstate system are a staple of America. Started in 1950 under the Eisenhower administration, the Interstate was meant to connect America and give our military a easier time transporting itself around the nation. However the planning of where these roads should go was and still is controversial. While we today almost couldn’t imagine driving without the convenience of the Interstate, these road systems have lead to the division of neighborhoods and cities across the U.S. More insidious than that, many of these roads divided areas and residents based on race and income. The highway, a symbol of mobility, became to many, a impassable divide. Many publications have looked into the effects of highway and interstate planning but the Washington Post found that across the nation cities and areas had been racially divided by these roadways along with other planned areas.  

In this diagram,  is Rock Creek Park, which also houses a parkway on which D.C. residents get to work. On the left of the parkway is a predominantly White neighborhood and on the right, mashed together are Black, Asian and Hispanic neighborhoods. The park and parkway itself were created by the government and as the Washington Post says “became over the years a de facto buffer between white and non-white communities.”

NPR also reported on this issue of Highways and roadways. They reported that even the 2016 U.S. Transportation secretary had dealt with being isolated by two interstates as a child. It goes on to point out that many planners of the highway and interstate system understood the divide they were creating and were not deterred by it. Robert Moses, a planner in New York City in the 1960s, stated, “our categorical imperative is action to clear the slums and we can’t let minorities dictate that this century-old chore will be put off another generation or finally abandoned.”. He backed up his words with the Sheridan Expressway. He not only displaced residents with the construction but also isolated Hunts Point from the rest of south Bronx.

Even the government today acknowledges its past mistakes with the highway system. Not only are the highways and roads bad for the environment but also social environments, such as cities. The Federal Highway Administration points out that President Nixon signed into law, NEPA, or the National Environmental Policy act of 1969. In doing so it created rules stating that the government had to do studies to see how the highways would affect, social, economic and environmental factors. While this doesn’t solve the past wrongs it creates at least more barriers in stopping past mistakes being repeated.

For myself the Highways are essential. On road trips with my father I saw the old “highways” of his days and couldn’t imagine going anywhere in the U.S. like that. However being a middle class white kid, I never saw how the highways separated people. To myself highways were always just tools for me to get around. I find myself most comparing the highway and the problems it created to environmental sociology, more specifically the idea that they were created as services for people, but ended up discriminating the population it was meant to help. Where planners consciously divided up the population as they, well off white men, saw fit. There is hope now that as we recognize the problems and activists continue to speak up, old highways will be torn down and built again in a manner that truly connects people. With a nation whose infrastructure is crumbling and deteriorating, we are presented with a rare opportunity to completely overhaul our highway system and make it into the thing that reconnects the people it originally displaced and bring back together our fractured cities and neighborhoods.