You don’t have to look far from Vancouver to see how transportation policies of the past have harmed minority communities.
Construction of Interstate 5 through Portland’s Albina district during the 1960s divided that city’s Black population, removed hundreds of mostly Black-owned homes and displaced businesses that also were typically minority-owned. This followed construction of nearby Memorial Coliseum, which also displaced hundreds of residents. And it presaged a planned expansion of the Emanuel Hospital complex, which cleared 22 blocks of homes and businesses and destroyed the heart of the city’s Black community. The expansion never took place.
The United States has a long history of displacing minority populations in the name of progress. And this history points out the need for equity concerns to be part of discussions about a replacement Interstate 5 Bridge.
“There are instances around the country where freeways or transportation infrastructure were placed with no consideration for the community that it was impacting, the people that it was displacing,” Greg Johnson, administrator of the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program, told The Columbian.
For the America of the past, that was not an accident. As History.com writes: “Policy makers and planners saw highway construction as a convenient way to raze neighborhoods considered undesirable or blighted. And they deployed the massive infrastructure elements — multi-lane roadbeds, concrete walls, ramps and overpasses — as tools of segregation, physical buffers to isolate communities of color.”
Many of these policies can be traced to Robert Moses, New York City’s construction coordinator through the middle of the 20th century and the most influential urban planner of the 1900s. In 1943, according to OregonLive.com, Multnomah County hired him for $100,000 to design the Portland of the future. Regarding highway construction, Moses once said, “We can’t let minorities dictate that this century-old chore will be put off another generation or finally abandoned.”
As Interstate 5 was carved through Albina, writes OregonEncyclopedia.com, the plan was to “avoid affecting valuable properties downtown by dividing the established neighborhoods of North Portland, the heart of the city’s African-American community.”
This history of dismissiveness is relevant for a new bridge. Access to transit, expansion of arterials and a widening of approaches to the bridge must be seen through a lens of equity to avoid repeating mistakes that have harmed underserved communities.
“Just the versatility and being able to — whether or not you drive, whether or not you are different abled — have access to mass transit bridges the gap for all of that,” Jasmine Tolbert, president of NAACP Vancouver, said. “I feel like if we really were intentional about mass transit, just in this bridge project alone, I think that can also expand even more into Clark County. Because if you’re not in the inner city of Vancouver, you’re having a rough time accessing mass transit.”
Critics might view decisions of the past as long-ago shortcomings that the modern United States has outgrown. But such decisions have impacts that last for generations, with displacement compounded by the pollution and the health consequences that accompany a freeway.
Some 60 years ago, ignoring the concerns of the people most affected by major infrastructure projects was de rigueur. We trust that planners will pay more attention to equity this time around.
