Menu
Idea

highway construction

71
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Map depicting existing and proposed structures and modifications to the Hayti neighborhood in Durham, NC, 1960.

The Uneven Costs of Cross-Country Connectivity

Promoted as a social and economic savior, the US federal interstate highway system acted as a tool to promote racial injustices.
by Kevin Fox Gotham, Aissa Dearing, Leland Ware, M. Ruth Little via JSTOR Daily on June 6, 2024
The Interstate 10 junction with Highway 90 near downtown New Orleans, Louisiana.

A New Orleans Neighborhood Confronts the Racist Legacy of a Toxic Stretch of Highway

In New Orleans, plans compete for how to deal with the harm done to minority communities by the Claiborne Expressway.
by Drew Hawkins via KFF Health News on March 15, 2024
The Cross-Bronx Expressway, April 1971. Photo by Dan McCoy/Environmental Protection Agency/National Archives

How the New York of Robert Moses Shaped my Father’s Health

My dad grew up in Robert Moses’s New York City. His story is a testament to how urban planning shapes countless lives.
by Katie Mulkowsky via Aeon on November 3, 2023
Winding section of Highway 42 in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin's Long and Winding Road Has a Secret Past

For decades, locals believed landscape architect Jens Jensen designed this twisty stretch of Highway 42—the real history is even more serpentine.
by Tea Krulos via Atlas Obscura on August 15, 2023
Grid Lock in New York City.
Exhibit

Traffic Jam

Car culture is so pervasive that many people take it for granted. This exhibit shows how history can serve as our “blind spot detection,” enabling us to see new possibilities for the future.
The image of the forlorn girl on the outskirts of the Highway to Nowhere was shot by John Van Horn in the fall of 1968

Road to Ruin

In the late 1960s, Baltimore began demolishing Black neighborhoods to make room for an ill-fated expressway. Will the harm from the Highway to Nowhere ever be repaired?
by Ron Cassie via Baltimore Magazine on February 10, 2023
Black and white photo of Berlin Wall being reinforced in 1961

Mobility and Mutability: Lessons from Two Infrastructural Icons

The Embarcadero Freeway and the Berlin Wall exemplified how the politics of mobility reflected the arrangements of power in each society.
by John Munro via Imperial & Global Forum on October 5, 2022
A plan of what buildings are to be removed for the Freeway expansion.

Black People Are About To Be Swept Aside For A South Carolina Freeway — Again

In a planned highway widening project, 94 percent of displaced residents live in communities mostly consisting of Black and Brown people.
by Darryl Fears via Washington Post on September 8, 2021
Highway being built in Louisiana

What It Looks Like to Reconnect Black Communities Torn Apart by Highways

Take any major American city and you’re likely to find a historically Black neighborhood demolished, or cut off from the rest of the city by a highway.
by Laura Bliss, Pablo Robles, Rachael Dottle via Bloomberg on July 28, 2021
An aerial view of an interstate.

The Interstates: Planned Violence And The Need For Truth And Reconciliation

It is time to reckon with America’s racist legacy of Interstate Highway planning and engineering.
by Rebecca Retzlaff, Jocelyn Zanzot via The Metropole on April 7, 2021
Formal portrait photo of Harland Bartholomew in suit and tie

One Man Zoned Huge Swaths of Our Region for Sprawl, Cars, and Exclusion

Bartholomew’s legacy demonstrates with particular clarity that planning is never truly neutral; value judgments are always embedded in engineers' objectives.
by Ben Ross via Greater Greater Washington on January 8, 2019
Architectural rendering of a bridge.

The True Measure of Robert Moses (and His Racist Bridges)

Did Robert Moses ordered engineers to build the Southern State Parkway’s bridges extra-low, to prevent poor people in buses from them? The truth is complex.
by Thomas J. Campanella via CityLab on July 9, 2017

A Century of Highway Zombies

Since the 1920s, “highway hypnosis” has lulled drivers to disaster.
by Carmine Grimaldi via The Atlantic on July 29, 2016
Aerial view of big buildings, wide roads, open parking lots, and affordable housing from "Project One" in Newport, Virginia.

Urban Renewal in Virginia

Urban landscapes and communities all across the state of Virginia still bear the scars of urban renewal.
via Encyclopedia Virginia on September 19, 2024
Cars on an interstate highway at sunset.

Interstate Lovesong

How popular and official narratives have obscured the damaging impact of the interstate highway system.
by Ryan Reft via The Metropole on January 4, 2024
Parking lot full of cars

The Tyranny of the Parking Lot

Finding space for cars has remade the built world. A new history uncovers just how much our lives revolve around parking.
by Ben Furnas via The Nation on September 7, 2023
A view of Greenwood Avenue before it was destroyed in the 1921 race massacre.

What Really Caused the Destruction of Tulsa’s ‘Black Wall Street’

What happened after the destruction of Greenwood, once home to some of the wealthiest African Americans in the US.
by Brentin Mock, Victor Luckerson via CityLab on May 30, 2023
John H. Smith (left), mayor of Prichard, Alabama, unsuccessfully campaigned for the creation of an Africatown national park.

The Forgotten 1980s Battle to Preserve Africatown

A new book tells the definitive history of an Alabama community founded by survivors of the slave trade.
by Nick Tabor via Smithsonian on February 20, 2023
The back of the Hollywood sign at sunset.

The Hollywood Sign Debuted 100 Years Ago in 1923, the Year of L.A.’s 'Big Bang'

The year 2023 marks the centennial of many iconic L.A. landmarks, including the Hollywood sign, Memorial Coliseum, Biltmore Hotel and the Angelus Temple.
by Patt Morrison via Los Angeles Times on February 16, 2023
Traffic moves along the Interstate 76 in Philadelphia.
partner

We Mythologize Highways, But They’ve Damaged Communities of Color

Planners of the Interstate Highway System ignored warnings that they were damaging poor Black and Latino neighborhoods.
by Ryan Reft via Made By History on January 19, 2023
Futuristic representation of housing in Oakland

Untimely Futures

In Oakland, California, when it comes to Black homelessness and dispossession, dystopia is already here.
by Brandi T. Summers via Places Journal on November 1, 2021

Before Interstates, America Got Around on Interurbans

The fate of electrified “rural trolleys” at the beginning of 20th century could offer lessons for today’s train boosters.
by Vince Guerrieri via CityLab on October 6, 2021

Jane Jacobs vs. The Power Brokers

How the patron saint of progressive urban planning’s ideas and ideals were implemented – and corrupted.
by Sarah Mirk via The Nib on December 6, 2019

Was the Automotive Era a Terrible Mistake?

For a century, we’ve loved our cars. They haven’t loved us back.
by Nathan Heller via The New Yorker on July 22, 2019

Roads to Nowhere: How Infrastructure Built on American Inequality

From highways carved through thriving ‘ghettoes’ to walls segregating areas by race, city development has a divisive history.
by Johnny Miller via The Guardian on February 21, 2018
A man being arrested by an LAPD officer outside of a Mexican restaurant.

The Year 1960

City developers, RAND Corps dropouts, Latino activists—and Lena Horne, taking direct action against racism in Beverley Hills.
by Mike Davis via New Left Review on November 15, 2017

In 1919 Eisenhower Road Tripped Across the Country. It Didn't Go Well.

300 men and 3,000 miles of bad road.
by Alex Q. Arbuckle via Mashable on October 2, 2017

How World War I Ushered in the Century of Oil

When the war was over, the developed world had little doubt that a nation’s future standing in the world was predicated on access to oil.
by Brian C. Black via The Conversation on April 3, 2017
Roof spotter looking at New York City skyline
partner

Route Cause

On the 1870s skirmish between John D. Rockefeller and the upstart competitors who built the country’s first long-distance oil pipeline.
via BackStory on June 5, 2015

Emperor of Concrete

A 1974 review of Robert Caro's "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York."
by Gore Vidal via New York Review of Books on October 17, 1974
The famous photo of the eyes from The Great Gatsby.

How “The Great Gatsby” Changed the Landscape of New York City

On Robert Moses, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the culture of environmental waste.
by John Marsh via Monthly Review on November 13, 2024
View More
30 of
71

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History