Latest updates on “Reconnecting Communities” news, arrayed along two axes: one comparing progress towards reconnection vs. the opposite; and another transformative change (for better or worse) vs. incremental. More info and links: www.segregationbydesign.com/reconnection...

Overview of mid-October “Reconnecting Communities” news, arrayed along two axes: one comparing progress towards reconnection vs. the opposite; and another transformative change (for better or worse) vs. incremental. More info and links: www.segregationbydesign.com/reconnection...

Overview of September “Reconnecting Communities” news, arrayed along two axes: one comparing progress towards reconnection vs. the opposite; and another transformative change (for better or worse) vs. more status quo developments. More info and links: www.segregationbydesign.com/reconnection...

Great explainer video on how the construction of the interstate highway system destroyed cities and created more segregation. Ft/ @segbydesign.bsky.social
youtu.be/Sr2F4OZSETE?...

According to official sources, highway construction and “urban renewal” in Detroit displaced roughly 43,000 people during the 1950s/60s. Historians estimate the number to be far higher—closer to 100,000. More info: www.segregationbydesign.com/detroit/i75375

LA’s original Chinatown, before-and-after it was entirely demolished for the construction of Union Station, the Hollywood Freeway, and the creation of “Civic Center” between the 1930s-1950s. More info and images here: www.segregationbydesign.com/los-angeles/...

Thank you to everybody who came to our events last week in Brooklyn! We screened the short documentary I put together about the history of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and had some great discussions about the future of New York. We are planning more screenings for the summer and fall—stay tuned!

From @segbydesign.bsky.social’s Insta story Insta highlighting a point @pastpunditry.bsky.social (made on @thisdaypod.com):

It’s important to pay attention to what they’re *not* dismantling in the federal gov’t. They’re “preserving state capacity to create an explicitly white supremacist state.”

On February 5th, EPA removed from its website the environmental justice mapping and screening tool, EJScreen, as well as several related web pages.

Learn more:
envirodatagov.org/epa-removes-...

Some good Reconnecting Communities (RCP) projects in the batch. Hopefully this is not the last we will be seeing of Mayor Pete.

View of Aliso St. in Downtown LA, before-and-after it was transformed into a frontage road for the 101. Aliso was the Pacific Electric's only route across the LA River, and conversion of the street to a highway in 1951 resulted in the abandonment of all lines east of the river.

Savannah Union Station before-and-after it was demolished for construction of I-16 and “urban renewal” in the 1960s. More info: www.segregationbydesign.com/savannah/uni...

Today we work with the descendants of the Williams family as accountability partners in bring Dreamland into a contemporary context. We use film to spark community imagination around who we are as individuals, as a community, and around the future and lands we share.

The Mexican-American community of La Loma, before-and-after the government forcibly evicted residents and demolished the neighborhood to make way for Dodger Stadium in 1959. More info: www.segregationbydesign.com/los-angeles/...

At state & local levels, some positive vibes for this dark morning:

—New transit networks funded in Columbus & Nashville
—$1.5b for Seattle streets
—Failure of WA anti-climate initiative
—$1b/year for Los Angeles affordable hsg
—Affordable hsg bonds in Charlotte, RI, Baltimore

Here's a roundup:

John & Loula Williams rebuilt the Williams Dreamland Theater after a white supremacist mob destroyed it and the rest of Greenwood in the 1921 massacre. The theater was a mainstay of the rebuilt neighborhood until Tulsa's Black Wall St. was destroyed again in the 1960s by construction of I-244.

Construction of the BQE required the displacement of tens of thousands of people. Designed by Robert Moses, the highway cut a 15-mile gash through some of the most densely populated neighborhoods on the planet. More info: https://www.segregationbydesign.com/brooklyn/brooklynqueens-expressway

In Roxbury, officially known as the “heart of Black culture in Boston,” in the 1960s the government demolished the Dudley Street Church and replaced it with a police station. During this urban renewal project, the BRA displaced ~2,600 families (~8,600 people) in the Nubian Square area of Roxbury.