Paving the Way for Inequality
Using data to confirm what we’ve always suspected about freeway construction in NYC and LA
Driving back to my “small but sunny” Brooklyn apartment while listening to a podcast on “equitable urban planning” to pass the time, I’m struck by how close the window box flowers are to the interstate. This tale of two cities is starker than ever. Gentrifying urban areas see harmfully high influxes of investment in real estate, green space, and transit, while neighborhoods just a few miles away face purposeful de-gentrification. While it is widely understood that the socioeconomic gap between Black and White city residents is growing, impacting everything from homeownership to life expectancy, the “tale of two cities” phenomenon is best understood spatially.
It is no longer a particularly insightful or novel observation that planners chose to construct freeways through once healthy and vibrant neighborhoods, while masterfully avoiding white and high-income communities. From the beginning, highway network construction was a federal scheme to transport white commuters to and from their private and segregated suburban enclaves while destroying and displacing dozens of communities. By increasing mobility, highways bring economic benefit to the entire surrounding region — at the cost of the neighborhoods who host this infrastructure. When Robert Moses paved the first stretch of the Cross Bronx Expressway, he was following the American tradition of placing toxic infrastructure in marginalized communities who have less ability to fight back. Now, from Atlanta to Pittsburgh, the tradition is alive and well.
This American tradition imposed upon specific neighborhoods for the benefit of others is especially salient amidst the economic and COVID-19 crises. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted 1) existing health discrepancies, many of which are related to air pollution, and 2) differentiation between groups who have the option to drive and those who rely on public transit. My goal in exploring the impacts of spatially bounding neighborhoods with highways is to understand and shed light on these conversations through a data-driven lens.
America’s coastal metropolitan footholds of Los Angeles and New York City often exhibit a dichotomy of urban living, so I wanted to understand how similar their freeway construction is. Do the highways intersect the same kind of neighborhoods? What are the impacts on these neighborhoods — separated by thousands of miles, but both encircled by highways?
Los Angeles
During the mid-twentieth century automobile boom, multilane highways, primarily the I-110, I-5, and I-10 were built surrounding Southern and Eastern Los Angeles. I mapped household income census data and the locations of the specific freeways in question. I found that neighborhoods right near the highways have far lower household incomes than the northern and western neighborhoods of the city.
Air pollution from the highways’ construction and continued burden has also created a high concentration of environmentally disadvantaged communities along the highways. California Environmental Screener (CES) scores factor in both pollution burden and population vulnerability through socioeconomic indicators and sensitivity. Neighborhoods in southeast LA, sandwiched between the I-10, I-5, and I-110 have relatively high CES scores, resulting from exposure to pollutants, adverse environmental conditions and prevalence of certain health conditions.
New York City
In the South Bronx, the Cross Bronx Expressway and Major Deegan Expressway surround several neighborhoods who, as a result, face disproportionately negative health and economic outcomes. These expressways, with their noise, pollution, and unsightliness, are a contributing factor for lowered property values, a root cause of the high rates of the “severe poverty” in the area. Investment in subway infrastructure in these neighborhoods is lacking, leaving residents surrounded by transportation, yet relatively immobile, as they are not within a convenient walk from the subway. I plotted subway stations and then used the TravelTime plug-in to create a 10 minute walking buffer, identifying areas that were in ‘subway deserts’.
Similarly to LA, the neighborhoods surrounded by the highways also face poorer health outcomes than the rest of the city. Childhood asthma hospitalizations 2–3 times higher than other parts of the city, impacting education and other social outcomes. These polygons are United Hospital Fund’s Neighborhood Boundaries, which collects data on childhood asthma hospitalization rate. The burden of traffic air pollution is particularly salient right now, as particulate matter from traffic air pollution increases the deadliness and risk of complications of COVID. It comes as no surprise therefore, that these areas are impacted heavily by COVID, with the Bronx experiencing the city’s worst case and death rates.
In both Los Angeles and New York City, the same infrastructure that brings commuters from their suburban homes to their Central Business District jobs creates negative externalities for residents along the highway corridors. As transportation planners look to reverse the damages caused by white-centered transit expansion, we must do so thoughtfully and not make the mistakes that planners made in constructing these highways. I’m not convinced there is a great solution, as millions now rely on these highways to access vital resources and employment. If we move too rapidly with replacing highways with greenway parks and mixed-use Jane Jacobs-approved buildings, we risk another age of urban renewal for the same neighborhoods who have already bore it. What is clear is that the status quo is no longer acceptable — let’s listen to those communities on what would actually be helpful and truly work for and with them, and towards a better future for all of us.
