Racist and Discriminatory History of the Planning Practice in the US
The planning profession has a long, entangled history with the segregation of Black Americans and other communities of color. Historic disinvestment in communities of color, environmental justice, and meaningful engagement of communities whose voices have been silenced or ignored in the past continue to be issues that the profession is reckoning with and working to rectify.
This article looks at the history of urban planning policies during the New Deal and post-war period and the impacts on racial inequality today. This is part of a series examining racial equity in U.S. planning practice.
Suburbanization and Urban Renewal
Redlining
Urban planning policies have played a significant role in creating and perpetuating racial segregation and wealth inequality that we still see today. During the New Deal in the 1930’s, federal policies were designed to segregate the U.S.’s housing stock by providing housing for white middle- and lower-class Americans in new suburban developments. African Americans and other communities of color who were equally able to afford these new houses, were excluded from purchasing these homes and limited to housing developments located in the urban city center (Gross 2017).
To see how your city was redlined and how these boundaries align with current streets and neighborhoods, this interactive map overlays redlining maps published by the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) of the New Deal era and overlays them over modern street maps.
The most infamous land use practice was the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) policy of redlining. Redlining was the process where neighborhoods were graded by the government to determine which areas were safe to insure mortgages. Neighborhoods were ranked into four categories: A (Best), B (Still Desirable), C (Definitely Declining), and D (Hazardous). These rankings were primarily based on the racial makeup of the neighborhood. Neighborhoods that African Americans and other communities of colors lived in were given a D rating and outlined in red, hence the term “redlining”. Neighborhoods that may have been predominantly white but were adjacent to an area where communities of color lived would receive a lower ranking than a white neighborhood further away.
Redlined communities were far more likely to be denied loans and mortgages from banks, thereby preventing communities of color from gaining equity through homeownership. Additionally, housing covenants were often used to restrict non-white people from buying property in more highly ranked neighborhoods where it was easier to secure loans (Gross 2017). This resulted in long-term disinvestment in communities of color.
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 deemed it unlawful for housing lenders to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, handicap, or familial status, making redlining illegal. However, the impacts of discriminatory housing and land use practices continue to have an effect today.
Urban Renewal and Infrastructure Projects
The redlining-guided racial distribution of the American population and New Deal policies set the scene for urban renewal efforts in the following decades. Urban renewal was a movement intended to improve the living conditions in urban areas, including lack of housing, general sanitation, inadequate transportation, and crime (Encyclopaedia Britannica n.d.). Early policies focused on improving public health in cities, which later transitioned into a greater emphasis on suburbanization and slum clearance. Several key federal policies implemented during this time period, including the Housing Act of 1949, the Housing Act of 1954, and the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, paved the way for large-scale urban renewal projects and demolitions that disproportionately displaced Black and Brown communities. Approximately two-thirds of those displaced were people of color (Small 2017).
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 and the creation of the Highway Trust Fund financed the construction of 41,000 miles of interstate highway by 1970, providing greater auto connectivity across the country. Freeway construction was commonly used as a slum clearance strategy by planners and engineers, which demolished and divided primarily low-income Black communities (Patterson and Harley 2019). Racial borders established by discriminatory housing and planning practices took on a visceral form through freeways that often served as boundaries between white and non-white communities.
Impacts on Today
Generational Wealth
Though African Americans and other communities of color were allowed to purchase homes in the suburbs after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, houses were no longer affordable to working-class families as they had been in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Suburban homes that African Americans were prohibited from buying in the 1940’s through the 1960’s cost approximately twice the national median income when they were first built. They currently sell at six to eight times the national median income (Gross 2017). Because homeownership has traditionally been a key factor in the accumulation of generational wealth in the U.S., barring people of color from home ownership and limiting home ownership in areas that were disinvested has profound impacts on racial wealth inequality today.
Public Health
Disinvested communities have less access to resources and services, and what services they do receive tend to be of poorer quality. This can manifest in their ability to access health services, or grocery stores, and in public school quality. Low-income neighborhoods and communities of color disproportionately live in areas with less tree canopy coverage and are also disproportionately burdened by environmental hazards and other health stressors. Neighborhoods that are closer to highways and other large, heavily trafficked boulevards have higher rates of asthma and worse health outcomes due to increased exposure to air pollutants (Alameda County Public Health Department 2015).
West Oakland and I-880
West Oakland is predominantly lower-income and people of color. People of color make up 85 percent of the West Oakland population with Black people making up the largest racial group at 49 percent of the population. Contrastingly, 66 percent of Alameda County are people of color and 12 percent of the county’s population is Black (Alameda County Public Health Department 2015).
West Oakland also has some of the highest air pollution-linked emergency department admittances and hospitalization rates in Alameda County. Asthma emergency room visits are nearly double the countywide rate. In Oakland, a white child in the affluent Oakland Hills has a life expectancy that is 12.4 years longer than a Black child born in West Oakland (Alameda County Public Health Department 2015).
West Oakland, a historically redlined neighborhood and one of the few places in the East Bay where African Americans were allowed to own homes, saw the construction of several major urban renewal infrastructure projects in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The newly constructed freeways physically separated the neighborhood from the rest of the city. Cypress Freeway, an elevated freeway section of I-880 constructed in 1958, bisected the community, effectively facilitating the clearing of existing housing and cutting off residents from downtown. Freeway construction and urban renewal projects are estimated to have demolished over 5,000 housing units in West Oakland (Patterson and Harley 2019).
In 1989, the Cypress Freeway collapsed during the Loma Prieta earthquake. Caltrans planned to rebuild the freeway along the original alignment, but this decision was met with public outcry. Through a combination of well-organized community activism, a changing political and cultural landscape, and environmental laws that gave the public more power to oppose large public works projects, the community effectively opposed the project’s alignment (Burt 2009). I-880 was rerouted around West Oakland and the original route was converted into a landscaped boulevard in 2005, now known as Mandela Parkway.
Looking Forward
Modern planning practices have largely taken a race-neutral approach to public policy, decision makers are increasingly putting an impetus on racial equity. In 2016, Senate Bill 1000 was passed, requiring cities and counties in California that have disadvantaged communities to include environmental justice goal and policies in their General Plans.
This mandate sets a framework for prioritizing vulnerable communities and opens up the conversation to a more focused examination of groups that have been both consciously and unconsciously silenced. Ensuring that community voices are not only heard but also given power in the decision-making process and increasing diversity within the planning profession continue to be challenges that need to be addressed if we hope to create plans that are truly for the community.
REFERENCES
Alameda County Public Health Department. 2015. "East and West Oakland Health Data Existing Cumulative Health Impacts."
Alameda County Public Health Department. 2015. "Persistent Poverty Story Map."
Burt, Cecily. 2009. "West Oakland Citizens Band Togeter to Fight Freeway after Loma Prieta." East Bay Times, October 12.
Encyclopaedia Britannica. n.d. "Urban Renewal." https://www.britannica.com/topic/urban-renewal.
Gross, Terry. 2017. "A 'Forgotten History' of How the U.S. Government Segregated America." NPR, May 3.
Patterson, Regan F, and Robert A Harley. 2019. "Effects of Freeway Rerouting and Boulevard Replacement on Air Pollution Exposure and Neighborhood Attributes." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, October 23.
Small, Andrew. 2017. "The Wastelands of Urban Renewal." Citylab, Feburary 13.