Who Tore Up the Tracks? · Episode 8 of 24 · 23 min
Paradise Paved: Suburbs, Bulldozers, and the Freeway Revolt
The interstates did not only connect cities; they cut through them, often through neighborhoods least able to object. The episode sets subsidized suburban mortgages beside redlining, then follows urban freeways into Overtown, Rondo, West Oakland, and Claiborne Avenue, and the revolts in San Francisco, New Orleans, and Boston that stopped the bulldozers.
Who's who
- Robert MosesNew York master builder, emblem of the freeway-era planner
- Jane JacobsAuthor who helped defeat Moses's road plans in Manhattan
- Sammie AbbottActivist behind the Washington protest posters against freeway routes
- Reginald BookerChaired Washington's Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis
- William J. LevittBuilder of Levittown, who defended whites-only sales
- Frederick BabcockFHA underwriter whose manual codified racial discrimination in lending
- Francis SargentMassachusetts governor who halted Boston-area expressways in 1970
- John VolpeTransportation Secretary who canceled New Orleans's Riverfront Expressway
Where it happens
- Overtown, MiamiNeighborhood carved by I-95
- Rondo, St. Paul, Minnesota+1 more episodeNeighborhood cut by I-94
- West Oakland, CaliforniaCypress Street Viaduct built through the neighborhood
- Claiborne Avenue, New OrleansI-10 built over the oak-lined neutral ground
- Levittown, New YorkTemplate for postwar suburbia
- Embarcadero, San FranciscoFreeway halted and later demolished
Timeline
- 1934National Housing Act creates the Federal Housing Administration
- 1944GI Bill adds VA-backed home loans
- 1956Federal-Aid Highway Act funds urban interstates
- 1959San Francisco cancels seven of ten planned freeways
- 1969Volpe cancels the New Orleans Riverfront Expressway
- October 1989Loma Prieta earthquake collapses the Cypress Structure
Still debated
Displacement totals are estimates; the federal figure is about 475,000 households. Whether routes reflected racial intent or lowest-cost, least-resistance logic after redlining varies by city, and the outcome was consistent even where intent is thin.