Camara says her parents moved as a child to another Shreveport neighborhood, Allendale, where she still lives. But now her current home risks being bulldozed so that a second highway, Interstate 49, can connect directly through the city.
Shreveport leaders who want to change the House of Commons on a highway embrace a Dwight Eisenhower-era belief in the all-powerful good of the interstate highway system. The feeling persists even decades after the thinness of urban highways became clear: pollution, noise, racism, displacement and congestion. For critics, Eisenhower’s highways were a stake driven by the heart of healthy cities.
Now, many of these urban highways are collapsing, and a foundation has sprung up in the national cities to tear them down. There are 30 local, citizen-led campaigns to persuade officials to clear highways, according to Ben Crowther, who leads “highways to boulevards” program at the Congress for new urbanism, a think tank dedicated to walking urban environments. A Senate bill introduced last year called for $ 10 billion to be spent on moving urban highways. Even Detroit, perhaps the most dominated city in the United States, is considering removing a portion of the highway.
“Now more than ever, in Covid’s time, people are rethinking how the streets and infrastructure around them serve the people who live in cities,” Crowther told CNN Business.
Activists believe that highway removal projects play a role in racial justice and make some kind of amendments for families displaced decades ago, such as Camara.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is among those who spoke about the history of black neighborhoods disproportionately divided by highway projects and asked correcting those mistakes.
But experts say replacing urban highways with boulevards offers no guarantee of racial justice and risks making matters worse. Increasing land values can trigger gentrification, damaging communities of color that have already suffered when highways were built.
“We need to think not only about ‘getting to a boulevard,’ but about a time of restorative justice for the people who have suffered, as well as some conservation and prevention for those who are still there,” said Calvin Gladney. CEO of Smart Growth America, a community development organization.
The neighborhood that was
Detroit-based Kenneth Cox, 87, remembers hearing young Aretha Franklin sing at her father’s New Bethel Baptist Church. located in the Black Bottom neighborhood. He remembered CNN Business attending the neighborhood ice rink and liked vanilla ice cream at Barthwell’s, a pharmacy chain.
“It was a black business mecca,” recalls Cox of Black Bottom, whose lightning-fast Gotham hotel attracted stars such as Louie Armstrong and Duke Ellington.
But as the interstate highway system was traced, Black Bottom was in his sights.
There were no blacks people on the Detroit City Council at the time, according to Jamon Jordan, a Detroit historian. The city’s five-member housing commission had only one black member, who soon resigned in protest, according to Jordan.
Black Bottom was bulldozed in the 1960s to make way for Interstate 375.
We’re moving forward to this day, and Detroit and Michigan plan to tear down Highway 375 and turn it into a boulevard. But for many Detroiters, the project It has nothing to do with repairing the past.
PG Watkins, who runs the Black Bottom Archives, which tells the story of Detroit, says some residents welcome the move to make the neighborhood thrive again, while others believe the project is not for Black Detroit, but for white residents who could move.
“A lot of people are like, ‘We just have to be honest about why this is happening,'” Watkins said.
Mary Sheffield, a Detroit board member representing neighborhoods near I-375, described the project to CNN Business as an effort by planners “to attract a different segment of society that has not been city residents in recent history.”
Stephanie Chang, a Michigan state senator who surveyed residents of mostly black neighborhoods near I-375, found that most do not want the highway removed.
A spokesman for the Michigan Department of Transportation, who is leading the project, told CNN Business that the project is not about gentrification, but about mobility.
“We need a 60-year-old highway with outdated interchanges, damaged bridges and paving and finding a suitable solution that takes into account safety, operations and improved connectivity for all users,” said spokesman Rob Morosi.
The department is working with the Detroit government, he added, which has programs and policies in place to address property growth.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, a spokesman for questions about any measures to ensure that the I-375 project benefits nearby black residents who may be at risk of gentrification, suggested the project is not such a case. .
“The proposed 375 project does not involve the movement of anyone – it involves the potential movement of a commuter highway on a surface road,” Mayor’s spokesman John Roach said in an email. “I am not aware of the possible inconveniences of commuters as a recognized form of gentrification.”
But the Michigan Department of Transportation said property values and rents may increase in adjacent I-375 residential areas, indicating that the project may trigger gentrification. The spokesman did not respond to requests for comment on the department’s findings.
Gentrification seems to be on Buttigieg’s radar, but how he will approach it is unclear.
“There has been a legacy of misinvestment and missed opportunities in federal transportation policies that reinforce racial and economic inequality,” Buttigieg said in a statement to CNN Business. “We must be careful that these mistakes are not repeated in ongoing projects.”
Buttigieg declined to detail the specific measures he recommended to be taken to prevent further damage to communities already adversely affected by highways.
He also said he would not step in and stop the Shreveport I-49 project, which is awaiting federal approval. However, he said ongoing projects are being assessed on a case-by-case basis to determine if the department can intervene to address community concerns.
Jordan, the Detroit historian, finds that when he holds tournaments or conferences, few people know the history of the Black Bottom and black businesses and institutions in Detroit. He used to hear from people who heard that “black people confused the city,” he said – a belief that the city was great when Henry Ford was in Detroit and that things were great until blacks took over the city.
He he called on the government to address the damaged black business when the neighborhood was destroyed more than 60 years ago, so it can be among the beneficiaries of the redevelopment. And Jordan added that a historic landmark and a a community center should be built in the new neighborhood to educate people about the black bottom.
“There has to be some kind of acknowledgment of what happened,” Jordan said. “There has to be a part of this story.”