The highways and roads that shape our cities were often intentionally built at the expense of Black, Latino and other minority Americans. Here's how that still hurts communities of color today. ⬇️
Cars on the Southern State Parkway in Nassau County, circa 1960. The urban planner Robert Moses, according to biographers, designed the road so that bridges were low enough to keep buses — which would likely be carrying poor minorities — from passing underneath on the route from New York City to Long Island's beaches.Cars on the Southern State Parkway in Nassau County, circa 1960.
Robert Bullard, a professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University, says race has played a central role in how cities across America developed - and in how they continue to grow.Plessy v. Ferguson While the court would eventually come to reject the"separate but equal" doctrine enshrined by the case starting in the 1950's, Bullard says even today, not all transportation is created equal. Instead, cities often base plans for bus routes, highways and other infrastructure on a premise that some communities have more worth than others.
Some progress has been made as laws have changed around practices like housing segregation, but Bullard says minorities are often still excluded from planning decisions. He calls the dynamic at play"highway robbery," wherein minorities pay taxes at the same rates as white Americans, but those dollars then subsidize racist patterns of development.
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