The racist side of the interstate highway system

See Mr. Biden, Tear Down This Highway by Adam Paul Susaneck. He is an architectural designer and the founder of Segregation by Design. Excerpts:

"The Department of Transportation has estimated that highway construction has displaced over a million people in the United States since the 1950s. Hundreds of thousands more were forced to move by urban renewal projects, with scant assistance provided to those relocated.  

These highways, for which the 1956 law provided matching funds of 90 cents for every 10 cents spent by the states, sliced through downtown areas and made possible the development of new car-centric suburbs on the outskirts of existing cities. The real estate industry’s widespread use of what were known as “restrictive covenants” during the first half of the 20th century ensured that many of these new suburbs were closed to anybody considered nonwhite, specifying that the homes could be sold only to “members of the Caucasian race.” Although the Fair Housing Act outlawed restrictive covenants in 1968 and they carry no legal force today, their legacy lives on in many cities where they have never been struck from the books. 

These practices encouraged and exacerbated white flight and racial segregation. American city centers entered a period of significant decay as tax bases dried up and cities cut back on municipal services. Urban renewal programs used this physical decline as justification to remake their civic cores for the convenience of the suburban, white commuter.

Cities paved over vibrant neighborhoods filled with parks, public spaces and rail transit systems, replacing them with amenities focused on suburban commuters, such as massive sports arenas, entertainment centers, single-use office complexes and parking — lots of parking. Black neighborhoods were targeted with such regularity that James Baldwin, in a 1963 interview, famously described urban renewal by saying: “It means Negro removal. That is what it means. And the federal government is an accomplice to this fact.” 

Many homeowners whose houses were seized by eminent domain and destroyed by the government were also denied the ability to purchase new homes in whites-only suburbs. Displaced residents often had no choice but to move into shoddily maintained public housing, robbing them of their chance to pass down wealth in the form of real estate from parent to child, thereby cementing a cycle of generational poverty."