Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx is getting serious about the damage done to African-American neighborhoods by highway construction.
As Angie Schmitt reports:
Growing up in Charlotte, Foxx’s own street was walled in by highways, he recalled in a speech today at the Center for American Progress. Building big, grade-separated roads through thickly settled neighborhoods devastated communities, uprooted residents, and cut off the people who remained from the city around them.
The relative risk of a Black Family being displaced by highway construction was approximately 17 times that of a White Family’s risk. And I bet a good number of those displaced White Families were low-income. This is what planning by pitchfork looks like.
How could this not matter to public health?