Segregation by Design

Overview of September “Reconnecting Communities” news, arrayed along two axes: one comparing progress towards reconnection vs. the opposite; and another transformative change (for better or worse) vs. more status quo developments. More info and links: www.segregationbydesign.com/reconnection...

YouTube video by Daniel Steiner U.S. Highway Map, Explained

Great explainer video on how the construction of the interstate highway system destroyed cities and created more segregation. Ft/ @segbydesign.bsky.social
youtu.be/Sr2F4OZSETE?...

According to official sources, highway construction and “urban renewal” in Detroit displaced roughly 43,000 people during the 1950s/60s. Historians estimate the number to be far higher—closer to 100,000. More info: www.segregationbydesign.com/detroit/i75375

LA’s original Chinatown, before-and-after it was entirely demolished for the construction of Union Station, the Hollywood Freeway, and the creation of “Civic Center” between the 1930s-1950s. More info and images here: www.segregationbydesign.com/los-angeles/...

‘The Story of the BQE’ documentary showcases epic neighborhood destruction Perhaps no transportation issue has galvanized the borough of Brooklyn more than the state of the crumbling, polluting and divisive BQE.

Thank you to everybody who came to our events last week in Brooklyn! We screened the short documentary I put together about the history of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and had some great discussions about the future of New York. We are planning more screenings for the summer and fall—stay tuned!

From @segbydesign.bsky.social’s Insta story Insta highlighting a point @pastpunditry.bsky.social (made on @thisdaypod.com):

It’s important to pay attention to what they’re *not* dismantling in the federal gov’t. They’re “preserving state capacity to create an explicitly white supremacist state.”

EPA Removes EJScreen from its Website – Environmental Data and Governance Initiative On February 5th, EPA removed several web pages about the environmental justice mapping and screening tool, EJScreen, as well as the tool itself. These pages, which now cannot be accessed or simply say...

On February 5th, EPA removed from its website the environmental justice mapping and screening tool, EJScreen, as well as several related web pages.

Learn more:
envirodatagov.org/epa-removes-...

Some good Reconnecting Communities (RCP) projects in the batch. Hopefully this is not the last we will be seeing of Mayor Pete.

And more info specifically about this incident here: laist.com/news/found-i...

Specifically, the Northern District was discontinued, shown in green on this map. More info about Aliso here: www.segregationbydesign.com/los-angeles/...

View of Aliso St. in Downtown LA, before-and-after it was transformed into a frontage road for the 101. Aliso was the Pacific Electric's only route across the LA River, and conversion of the street to a highway in 1951 resulted in the abandonment of all lines east of the river.

Before the station was replaced with a highway ramp, it was one of the primary commercial anchors and economic drivers of West Broad Street, historically the heart of Savannah’s Black and immigrant community.

Savannah Union Station before-and-after it was demolished for construction of I-16 and “urban renewal” in the 1960s. More info: www.segregationbydesign.com/savannah/uni...

Today we work with the descendants of the Williams family as accountability partners in bring Dreamland into a contemporary context. We use film to spark community imagination around who we are as individuals, as a community, and around the future and lands we share.

The Mexican-American community of La Loma, before-and-after the government forcibly evicted residents and demolished the neighborhood to make way for Dodger Stadium in 1959. More info: www.segregationbydesign.com/los-angeles/...

At state & local levels, some positive vibes for this dark morning:

—New transit networks funded in Columbus & Nashville
—$1.5b for Seattle streets
—Failure of WA anti-climate initiative
—$1b/year for Los Angeles affordable hsg
—Affordable hsg bonds in Charlotte, RI, Baltimore

Here's a roundup:

Watching “Watchmen” as a Descendant of the Tulsa Race Massacre A family was surprised to find their great-grandparents’ businesses at the center of the HBO show’s depiction of the Greenwood race riots. Now they want to tell their own story.

John and Loula's son William taught at Booker T. Washington High School in Greenwood for 42 years before retiring in the 70s. A fictionalized version of him appears in the recent Watchmen series as the character "Hooded Justice."

The Victory of Greenwood: John and Loula Williams Photograph of John & Loula Williams courtesy of the Tulsa Historical Society & Museum. Tulsa historian Scott Ellsworth’s Death in a Promised Land opens with the story of a young Bill Williams asking...

Read more about the Williams here. John and Loula were among Greenwood’s first residents and founded several businesses in the area, including the Williams Confectionary, Williams Drugstore, Williams One Stop Garage, and the Williams Dreamland Theater.

Ultimately, Greenwood—the famous "Black Wall Street"—was destroyed twice: once by a white supremacist mob in 1921, and again by highway construction and "urban renewal" in the 1960s. More from Smithsonian Mag: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/black-wall-streets-second-destruction-180977871/

Like many other residents of Greenwood whose homes and businesses were burned, the Williams defied the hastily enacted policies which the city had passed to prevent the neighborhood’s reconstruction (rezoning much of it to industrial).

John & Loula Williams rebuilt the Williams Dreamland Theater after a white supremacist mob destroyed it and the rest of Greenwood in the 1921 massacre. The theater was a mainstay of the rebuilt neighborhood until Tulsa's Black Wall St. was destroyed again in the 1960s by construction of I-244.

More on Red Hook here: https://www.segregationbydesign.com/brooklyn/red-hook

This image in particular is of Red Hook. The BQE cut through one of the neighborhood's main commercial corridors on Hamilton Ave and divided Red Hook from the rest of the borough.

Construction of the BQE required the displacement of tens of thousands of people. Designed by Robert Moses, the highway cut a 15-mile gash through some of the most densely populated neighborhoods on the planet. More info: https://www.segregationbydesign.com/brooklyn/brooklynqueens-expressway

In Roxbury, officially known as the “heart of Black culture in Boston,” in the 1960s the government demolished the Dudley Street Church and replaced it with a police station. During this urban renewal project, the BRA displaced ~2,600 families (~8,600 people) in the Nubian Square area of Roxbury.