Highways and corporations made it whiter
by Julia Hammond
United States: With the passage of the Highway Acts of 1956 and 1958, the pattern of community development in America was “fundamentally altered.” From that point on, our geography and settlement patterns were based around motor vehicles: companies sited offices and families built homes based on where the highways were.
The transition away from public transportation toward private vehicles was spurred by those who stood to benefit with little to no regard for those whose homes, livelihoods, and families it would harm. Highways were intended to provide mobility and freedom. But it was created by and for those with the privileges of vehicular mobility, homeownership, and reliable income -- so those benefits were often reserved for wealthier, whiter people.
The conversation around urban and highway planning in the mid-20th century was undeniably racialized. One of the proposed reasons to build the interstate highway system was to “invigorate blighted urban areas.” By the late 1930’s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and Federal Housing Administration used the racial composition of a neighborhood -- often labeled “Percentage of Negroes” -- as the primary way to identify “blight.” But despite promises of urban renewal, rather than being invigorated by the highways, these neighborhoods were destroyed to make space for them. The “blighted” neighborhoods, often struggling neighborhoods of primarily people of color, were the ones targeted for demolition.
In Connecticut: When the highway building boom hit, our state was no exception. In 1958, Governor Ribicoff called building I-84 his “top priority.” By 1961, I-84 stretched from the New York State line to Sandy Hook, running 15 miles through Danbury. Twenty-five years later, the road was widened from four lanes to six to accommodate the increase in car traffic at the overlap with US 7. The construction of highways precipitated an influx of corporations seeking large, self-contained office complexes. For example, the opening of 1-684 in Westchester expedited Union Carbide's move to Danbury. When the companies moved (usually from New York), they brought their employees (and their cars and families) with them. Also during this time frame, municipalities like Stamford began attracting speculative investors and receiving large grants for downtown urban renewal, projects that built new roads and further attracted new businesses, but displaced many lower-income residents.
In Newtown: There is no evidence that construction of interstate highways played a role in driving families of color out of then-sparsely populated Newtown -- but it likely made it more difficult for them to move in. The “corporate wave” of the 1980s, plus the construction of new and expanded highways, transformed a cluster of rural towns surrounding Danbury (and completely disconnected from New York) into the outer edge of the NYC metropolitan area. If your family moved to the area for work in the 70s or 80s, you’re not alone -- in 1975, only New York and Chicago outranked Connecticut as centers for corporate headquarters, and upper Fairfield County was both affordable for professionals and accessible by car.
Real estate prices rose sharply, in part because the new professional class that moved to the area for work needed places to live. While organizations like the Suburban Action Institute advocated for corporations, including Union Carbide, to guarantee affordable housing for their minority-group employees, such guarantees never materialized. Union Carbide’s representatives responded that “adequate, low‐cost housing is available within a 45‐minute commutation of Danbury,” glossing over the fact that families without a generational wealth or a personal vehicle had a much harder time if they wanted to live in the surrounding area; it was well-connected by the new and improved highways but underserved by public transportation, and had plenty of homes for sale but relatively few apartments.
The transition away from public transportation toward private vehicles was spurred by those who stood to benefit with little to no regard for those whose homes, livelihoods, and families it would harm. Highways were intended to provide mobility and freedom. But it was created by and for those with the privileges of vehicular mobility, homeownership, and reliable income -- so those benefits were often reserved for wealthier, whiter people.
The conversation around urban and highway planning in the mid-20th century was undeniably racialized. One of the proposed reasons to build the interstate highway system was to “invigorate blighted urban areas.” By the late 1930’s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and Federal Housing Administration used the racial composition of a neighborhood -- often labeled “Percentage of Negroes” -- as the primary way to identify “blight.” But despite promises of urban renewal, rather than being invigorated by the highways, these neighborhoods were destroyed to make space for them. The “blighted” neighborhoods, often struggling neighborhoods of primarily people of color, were the ones targeted for demolition.
In Connecticut: When the highway building boom hit, our state was no exception. In 1958, Governor Ribicoff called building I-84 his “top priority.” By 1961, I-84 stretched from the New York State line to Sandy Hook, running 15 miles through Danbury. Twenty-five years later, the road was widened from four lanes to six to accommodate the increase in car traffic at the overlap with US 7. The construction of highways precipitated an influx of corporations seeking large, self-contained office complexes. For example, the opening of 1-684 in Westchester expedited Union Carbide's move to Danbury. When the companies moved (usually from New York), they brought their employees (and their cars and families) with them. Also during this time frame, municipalities like Stamford began attracting speculative investors and receiving large grants for downtown urban renewal, projects that built new roads and further attracted new businesses, but displaced many lower-income residents.
In Newtown: There is no evidence that construction of interstate highways played a role in driving families of color out of then-sparsely populated Newtown -- but it likely made it more difficult for them to move in. The “corporate wave” of the 1980s, plus the construction of new and expanded highways, transformed a cluster of rural towns surrounding Danbury (and completely disconnected from New York) into the outer edge of the NYC metropolitan area. If your family moved to the area for work in the 70s or 80s, you’re not alone -- in 1975, only New York and Chicago outranked Connecticut as centers for corporate headquarters, and upper Fairfield County was both affordable for professionals and accessible by car.
Real estate prices rose sharply, in part because the new professional class that moved to the area for work needed places to live. While organizations like the Suburban Action Institute advocated for corporations, including Union Carbide, to guarantee affordable housing for their minority-group employees, such guarantees never materialized. Union Carbide’s representatives responded that “adequate, low‐cost housing is available within a 45‐minute commutation of Danbury,” glossing over the fact that families without a generational wealth or a personal vehicle had a much harder time if they wanted to live in the surrounding area; it was well-connected by the new and improved highways but underserved by public transportation, and had plenty of homes for sale but relatively few apartments.
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