![]() ![]() The first was "urban renewal", where zoning changes and real estate ratings deemed current structures condemned or labeled whole blocks as a part of city "blight". These efforts ended up cutting wide gashes of freeways through city neighborhoods all across the United States 1.Īs was often the context for these expressways, there were two major talking points to justify the eminent domain seizure of property and redevelopment. It was an expensive, major urban area project, that was part of a wave of large-scale public projects in the post World War Two, Eisenhower administration effort to greatly expand the country's interstate system. This amounts to approximately $477 million in 2022 dollars.īefore and after the construction of I-375 Provided by the Michigan DOT At the time it began construction, in 1954, it cost roughly $50 million. ![]() A four-lane freeway south of the I-75 interchange, where it widens to six lanes. At only 1.062 miles in length, it once had the distinction of being the shortest signed Interstate Highway in the country, from the time it opened on Juntil 2007. Right in the heart of the city of Detroit, in the shadow of the General Motors tower and the stadium where the Tigers play is interstate-375. To better understand new solutions to our current problems, we can benefit from examinations of previous solutions, their broader ramifications and, ultimately, how they succeeded or failed. If we want to see American cities truly come back-to-life, it's going to require rethinking 70 years of how to do things, and not repeat some of the mistakes of our past. A city, its people, its economy and infrastructure are all part of a system. In each case study, the conditions are different, but there is a common thread tying them all together. This is part one of new series that attempts to examine specific communities, their history, how they were effected by large-scale city infrastructure changes, and focuses on the new nationwide trend to see these communities restored. It includes how, in the name of progress, a community can be torn apart, wither away, and be seen as nothing more than collateral damage. This includes the infrastructure and the city planning decisions that transform a community over time, as well as the ways some profit from those transformations, while others are negatively impacted by them. This emergent group of people cannot be separated from the physicality and the geography where they live. One word for these spaces is a "neighborhood." A place where people live, work, raise families, start businesses and meld together into something greater than, as a whole, their individual selves. Its identity is drawn, just like a map, atop the space where a community gathers. What does it mean to be a community? It depends largely on what defines the community, or how the community chooses to define itself. To bring it into the conversation, can only enrich the work itself. ![]() Grappling with the context and impact of the work of this industry, I believe, is valuable and worthwhile. Where they are built effects that area in complex ways. ![]() They are built in places where people live. If the work the industry does is build roads, and the work I do is to write about that, then I feel stories like this are just as important as an article about the latest innovative technology to hit the market. This story is the culmination of natural questions I felt compelled to ask. That's ok, they were uncomfortable to me. Some of the information and ideas presented might be uncomfortable to some people. This story is different than what you might normally find in this space. ![]()
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