In 1956, Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway Act, authorizing the construction of 41,000 miles of interstate highway. The program was sold as a defense measure — the highways would allow for rapid military mobilization in the event of a Soviet attack — but its primary effect was domestic. It reorganized American cities more thoroughly than any other single policy in the country's history.
The highways did not go through empty land. They went through cities, and within cities, they went through the neighborhoods that had the least political power to resist them. In city after city, the route of the urban interstate followed the same logic: it went through Black neighborhoods, through immigrant neighborhoods, through the neighborhoods of the poor.
The Destruction of Overtown
In Miami, the construction of I-95 through the neighborhood of Overtown is the defining example. Overtown was, in the 1950s, the cultural and commercial heart of Black Miami. It had hotels, nightclubs, restaurants, and a density of Black-owned businesses that made it one of the most vibrant Black neighborhoods in the South. Performers who were not allowed to stay in Miami Beach hotels — Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong — stayed in Overtown.
The construction of I-95 through Overtown displaced approximately 10,000 residents and destroyed the commercial core of the neighborhood. The highway did not just displace residents. It destroyed a community that had taken decades to build and could not be rebuilt. The social networks, the institutions, the economic relationships — all of these were severed by the highway.
The Reckoning
American cities are now beginning to reckon with the damage that urban highways caused. Several cities have removed elevated highways and replaced them with surface boulevards or parks. San Francisco removed the Embarcadero Freeway after the 1989 earthquake. Milwaukee removed the Park East Freeway in 2003. Rochester, New York is in the process of removing the Inner Loop.
In Miami, there is ongoing discussion about the future of I-395, the elevated highway that runs through the northern edge of downtown. The highway is due for reconstruction, and there are proposals to replace it with a tunnel or a surface road that would reconnect the neighborhoods it currently divides. Whether this will happen, and what form it will take, remains to be seen.
The highway removal movement is encouraging, but it is also limited. The damage that urban highways caused cannot be fully undone. The neighborhoods that were destroyed are gone. The communities that were dispersed cannot be reassembled. What highway removal can do is stop the ongoing harm and create the conditions for new growth. That is not nothing. But it is not restitution.