1/ Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has unveiled legislation that offers billions in federal dollars for cities willing to demolish urban highways that razed or divided neighborhoods decades ago. bloom.bg/3pMf9pl
2/ The Economic Justice Act, a spending package worth over $435 billion, includes a $10 billion pilot program that would provide funds for communities to examine transit infrastructure that has divided them along racial and economic lines and potentially alter or remove them.
3/ The backstory:
In 1956, the U.S. Congress passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, the $25 billion program that launched the Interstate Highway System. This nationwide frenzy of freeway building left behind a "horrific legacy" in scores of cities.
4/ As cities embraced the benefits of high-speed thoroughfares for suburban commuters, they bulldozed swaths of downtowns, vibrant neighborhoods of color, and waterfronts to make room for the roadways.
5/ "Black and brown neighborhoods have been disproportionately divided by highway projects or left isolated by the lack of adequate transit and transportation resources," tweeted Pete Buttigieg, the newly confirmed transportation secretary.
6/ For highway teardown advocates, the legislation is promising news.
"There's a long list of things that have to be done in order to see a highway removed," says Amy Stelly, a designer involved with plans to demolish the much-maligned Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans.
7/ Highway removals are hardly a quick or easy fix. The Big Dig, Boston's stab at moving its congested Central Artery underground and reuniting neighborhoods long divided by the highway, became infamous for lengthy delays and extra costs.
8/ While attempts to enshrine equity and public outreach in the law might help address those fears, historically unfair transportation and planning policies have left many barriers to participation that need to be addressed, says California-based urban planner Destiny Thomas.
9/ "This is going to require a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to righting a centuries-long wrong and to actively working to heal ongoing harm while also asking communities to involve themselves in the solution-finding process," says Destiny Thomas.
10/ Which roadways could be torn down?
Congress for the New Urbanism is among a host of advocacy organizations lobbying for the removal of urban highways. Their efforts include a biennial report on the freeways that activists most want to see scrapped. bloom.bg/3cAMMqr
11/ The Biden administration has identified racial equity and climate change as "overlapping and compounding crises" it wants to tackle. As many urban highways built in the 1960s are now reaching the end of their life cycles, this is a crucial moment for conversations on removal.
12/ "In the Biden-Harris administration, we will make righting these wrongs an imperative," Buttigieg suggests.
1/ America's states and cities are emerging from political exile bloom.bg/3ivSHhn
2/ President-elect Joe Biden's proposed cabinet includes at least six officials who have led municipalities or states, like Pete Buttigieg and Gina Raimondo.
That's in sharp contrast to President Trump, whose cabinet relied heavily on corporate and industry insiders.
3/ With the release of Biden's proposed economic stimulus package, local leaders got a glimpse of what an ally in the White House will mean.
The plan would provide $350 billion in aid to municipal governments. Such help was a major roadblock in stimulus negotiations in 2020.
Demands for police accountability, criminal justice reform and racial justice have been translated from rallying cries and protest signs into initiatives on state and local ballots.
According to a @ballotpedia count, there are at least 20 local police-related measures that qualified for the ballot after the killing of George Floyd.
While some of the measures were proposed directly as a response to the police killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the calls for change that followed, others had been in the pipeline for years or months, only to gain new momentum this spring.
The plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is the latest example of the far-right/anti-government terrorism happening across the country, and researchers say it’s unlikely to be the last. bloom.bg/3m8nMbo
Since the Minneapolis killing of George Floyd on May 25, professor @areidross has collected nearly 800 incidents.
Including the murders of two BLM protesters by 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, WI. bloom.bg/3m8nMbo
@areidross has built an interactive map meant to track harassment done by both individuals and groups such as the Proud Boys and Boogaloos.
Police expenditures have grown over the last decade and most of the big cities surveyed will allocate over a quarter of their general fund budget to them.
Since Floyd was killed, average rates of these stops across census tracts have plummeted below pandemic levels: an average of 70 a week from May 25 to the end of August, compared with a weekly average of 351 prior.