“It is increasingly clear to me that white flight was not a mystical process for which we have no real explanation or understanding. White flight was the policy of our federal, state, and local government. That policy held that Americans should enjoy easy access to cities via the automobile and live in suburbs without black people, who by their very nature degraded property and humanity.”

-Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2013

“If the ends don’t justify the means, what does?”

-Robert Moses, 1953

Using historic aerial photography, this ongoing project aims to document the destruction of communities of color due to red-lining, “urban renewal,” and freeway construction. Through a series of stark aerial before-and-after comparisons, figure-ground diagrams, and demographic data, this project will reveal the extent to which the American city was methodically hollowed out based on race. The project will cover the roughly 180 municipalities which received federal funding from the 1956 Federal Highway Act, which created the interstate highway system.

Since the creation of the Interstate, freeway planning has been an integral tool in the systematic, government-led segregation of American cities. Used not only as a direct means to destroy the communities in their paths, freeways have also been used to cement racial segregation and ensure its endurance (Archer, 2020). Working synergistically with the legacy of redlining, freeway planning became the ultimate enforcement mechanism: literal walls of concrete and smog that separated black communities from white. In the name of the thinly veiled racist policies of “urban renewal,” the freeways took the red lines off the map and built them in the physical world.

Moreover, as the government used direct financial assistance to encourage suburbia to sprawl (suburbia closed to African-Americans due to restrictive covenants), freeways provided the literal routes for “White Flight.” These weren’t just routes to get white people to the suburbs, these were also walls to keep black and brown people trapped in the central cities. With remarkable consistency, across cities of varying population, geography, and history, the federal government hemmed in downtowns with orbital or near-orbital freeway routes that physically separated central cities from the suburbs (Davis, 1990).

Through freeway construction and urban renewal, the government displaced hundreds of thousands of its own citizens while providing virtually no financial assistance to the internal refugees it had created (Rothstein, 2017). It obliterated entire communities, destroyed livelihoods, and robbed African-Americans of hard-earned equity in their cities. The generational effect of this has been to create a cycle of poverty, a feedback loop which prevents those in poverty from obtaining any equity in the city (Archer, 2020).

The people whose houses and business were destroyed, whose communities were wiped away, whose social networks were decimated, deserve direct reparation both financially and in terms of the built environment. This means first recognizing the freeway network as a physical symbol of segregation, radically rethinking it, and wholesale dismantling of much of it.

The dismantling of urban freeways would have the most benefit for those who have been directly victimized, constituting one means of reparations. But all Americans stand to gain. In its white suprematist zeal the government destroyed the lives of many, but it also destroyed the American city. In the middle of the 20th century, the government pursued a campaign against the American city with a similar intensity as it did against the German and Japanese city years before. Instead of bombs, the freeway and urban renewal were its weapons (Galison, 2001). To this day, many of our cities have not yet recovered. Freeways gash across cities in all directions, creating barriers of concrete and asthma-inducing smog. Shoddily built high-rise residential projects (set back from the street and with no commercial space) have replaced row-houses and brownstones. Surface parking has become a prevailing land use, replacing small shops and businesses.

Our cities have become little more than towers poking up from beneath an ocean of parking. Once admired around the world, American urbanism has become a cautionary tale in the international community. It is nothing less than a national embarrassment, a symbol of the United States’ institutional prejudice and failure to adapt to the rapidly changing world.

Through historical photographs, this project will make salient not only those displaced directly in the paths of the freeways themselves, but also how these freeways have deliberately cemented an enduring segregation. I intend this project to be a sort of visual companion to such works as Richard Rothstein’s “Color of Law,” and Heather McGhee’s “The Sum of Us,” going city-by-city to see how the tactics of segregation played out on the ground.

The goal of this project is threefold:

1. Create an “Atlas of Urban Renewal” in book-form, revealing in concise photographic fashion the extent to which the government hollowed out roughly 180 downtowns and waged a racially-motivated “war against the center.” By revealing what was there before the freeway, people can begin to imagine what will be there after the freeway. In pursuit of this goal, I will use the funds from your donations to purchase higher quality aerial imagery suitable for digital and print. Currently the base historic aerial imagery is 1600x1600px at $10/image. With further funds from patreon I can buy the images at 3600x3600px for $30/image. Images this size will permit very high quality, large format printing on glossy stock.

2. Create digital materials for local groups opposing ongoing freeway expansion. As state governments continue to mindlessly widen freeways, community groups in cities across the country have formed in opposition. This project aims to support these groups by creating easily digestible graphics to spread awareness. To date (upon their request) I have provided material, including maps and diagrams, to groups opposing the expansion of I-45N in Houston, TX; the I-5 in Downey, CA; and the I-5 in Portland, OR. This material has been presented in public hearings as well as being featured on the influential urbanist site, Streetsblog.

3. Continue to grow the followership of Segregation by Design’s social media channels through regular posting, for the purpose of amplifying local voices in opposition to freeway expansion and raising further awareness.

Works Cited

Archer, Deborah. “White Men’s Roads through Black Men’s Homes”: Advancing Racial Equity through Highway Reconstruction.” Vanderbilt Law Review, Vol. 73, Iss. 5 (2020). https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr/vol73/iss5/1/

Davis, Mike. “City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles.” Verso (1990).

Rothstein, Richard. “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.” Liveright (2017).

Galison, Peter. “War Against the Center.” MIT Grey Room (2001). https://galison.scholar.harvard.edu/files/andrewhsmith/files/war_against_the_center_galison.pdf

Disclaimer
Segregation by Design is a personal project of Adam Paul Susaneck, an NYC-based architect. The views expressed on Segregation by Design are those of the Adam’s and the Adam’s alone.

List of Cities to be covered:

Alabama

• Birmingham

• Mobile

• Montgomery

Alaska

• Anchorage

Arizona

• Phoenix

• Tucson

Arkansas

• Little Rock

California

• Bakersfield

• Fresno

• Los Angeles County

• San Diego

• The Bay Area: SF, Oakland, SJ

• The Inland Empire

• Sacramento

Colorado

• Denver

• Pueblo

• Colorado Springs

Connecticut

• Bridgeport

• Hartford

• New Britain

• New Haven

• Stamford

• Waterbury

Delaware

• Wilmington

Washington, DC

Florida

• Daytona Beach

• Miami

• Jacksonville

• St. Petersburg

• Tampa

• Orlando

• West Palm Beach

Georgia

• Atlanta

• Columbus

• Macon

• Savannah

• Augusta

Hawaii

• Honolulu

Idaho

• Boise

Illinois

• Chicago

• Joliet

• Aurora

• Peoria

• Rockford

• Decatur

Indiana

• Indianapolis

• Gary

• South Bend

Iowa

• Des Moines

• Council Bluffs

• Sioux City

Kansas

• Kansas City

• Wichita

• Topeka

Kentucky

• Louisville

• Lexington

Louisiana

• New Orleans

• Baton Rouge

• Shreveport

Maine

• Portland

Maryland

• Annapolis

• Baltimore

Massachusetts

• Boston

• Springfield

• Worcester

Michigan

• Detroit

• Flint

• Grand Rapids

• Lansing

• Pontiac

• Muskegon

• Kalamazoo

• Saginaw

Minnesota

• Minneapolis

• Duluth

• Saint Paul

• Rochester

Mississippi

• Jackson

• Biloxi

Missouri

• Saint Louis

• Kansas City

Nebraska

• Omaha

• Lincoln

Nevada

• Reno

• La Vegas

New Hampshire

• Manchester

New Jersey

• Hudson County

• Trenton

• Newark

• Camden

• Atlantic City

• Bergen County

• Union County

• Essex County

New Mexico

• Albuquerque

New York

• Poughkeepsie

• Albany

• Newburgh

• Troy

• Schenectady

• Utica

• Rochester

• Niagara Falls

• Buffalo

• Syracuse

• B. of Manhattan

• B. of Brooklyn

• B. of The Bronx

• B. of Queens

• B. of Staten Island

North Carolina

• Charlotte

• Winston-Salem

• Durham

• Greensboro

• Raleigh

• Asheville

Ohio

• Akron

• Cleveland

• Toledo

• Cincinnati

• Youngstown

• Dayton

• Springfield

• Hamilton

Oklahoma

• Tulsa

• Oklahoma City

Oregon

• Portland

• Eugene

• Springfield

Pennsylvania

• Philadelphia

• Bethlehem

• Scranton

• Wilkes-Barre

• Pittsburgh

• Johnstown

• Harrisburg

Puerto Rico

• San Juan

Rhode Island

• Providence

South Carolina

• Columbia

• Charleston

• Spartanburg

Tennessee

• Memphis

• Knoxville

• Nashville

• Chattanooga

• Murfreesboro

Texas

• Laredo

• Lubbock

• Dallas

• Amarillo

• Fort Worth

• Waco

• Austin

• El Paso

• Galveston

• Houston

• San Antonio

Utah

• Salt Lake City

• Ogden

Virginia

• Richmond

• Roanoke

• Lynchburg

• Newport News

• Norfolk

Washington

• Seattle

• Spokane

• Tacoma

West Virginia

• Wheeling

• Charleston

Wisconsin

• Milwaukee

• Madison

• Oshkosh