BOSTON: FREEWAYS & URBAN RENEWAL

Freeway projects and “urban renewal” displaced over 20,000 Bostonians, with the gov’t offering little assistance for those who owned (compensating well below market rate), and no assistance for those who rented. Despite making up only 5% of Boston’s total population in 1950, 32% of the families displaced were African-American (source @urichmond). The vast majority of the rest were recent Irish immigrants, Italian immigrants, and Jewish immigrants from across Eastern Europe.

These images show a high-level overview of freeway and urban renewal projects in the Boston area and a list of the topics I plan on covering for the region.

Using urban renewal and freeway construction, the gov’t wiped out entire neighborhoods on a scale previously only seen in either natural disasters or war. The historic West End—one of those neighborhoods where the hope of America’s “melting pot” perhaps came the closest to fruition as it ever would—was entirely razed; its dense, winding streets replaced with parking lots for suburban commuters.

While “The Big Dig” attempted to fix the mistakes of the 50s and 60s, ultimately it was one step forward, two steps back. The Greenway is certainly an improvement over the former elevated structure, however burying and widening the highway (rather than downsizing or eliminating) was a reinvestment in and reaffirmation of car dominance. Moreover, jettisoning the rail link between North and South Station as part of the project (as originally intended) was a generational mistake that echoes across the entire north east rail corridor.