The Creation of America's Car Culture, Part 2
About this episode
Exploring the origins and impacts of America's interstate highway system, this episode highlights how highways like New Orleans' Claiborne Expressway and Syracuse's I-81 devastated historically Black neighborhoods, displacing residents and causing lasting social, environmental, and health issues. Featuring voices like urban planner Amy Stelly and activist Richard Levy, it reveals the racial and class biases in highway planning driven by car industry interests and Cold War defense fears. Despite community resistance, many highways were built, leaving legacies of blight and pollution. The episode also touches on recent efforts to reconnect and revitalize these divided neighborhoods.
Signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, otherwise known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, ushered in an unprecedented era of roadbuilding in the United States, becoming the largest public works project in the country's history. Designed to spread freedom and prosperity — and, as the name implies, provide for the national defense — these highways tore through urban neighborhoods, destroying once-thriving communities and displacing countless citizens, many of them people of color. In this special report, we examine just what inspired this massive project and the effects it had on two communities, one in New Orleans and one in Syracuse.
This episode was produced with the generous support of the Helen & William Mazer Foundation.
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Buick Century
"Those are streetcar suburbs. But in the mid-20th century, car manufacturers began dreaming of a new kind o..."
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