African-American neighborhoods are as disposable today as they were in the ’50s to Louisiana transportation officials.
In an effort to connect I-20 to I-49 in Shreveport, transportation officials and community members are considering an interstate slicing through Allendale, a historically black neighborhood in Shreveport.
Local businesses and transportation officials are touting the project as a job magnet, but one only has to look to New Orleans to see the lie in this claim.
The Allendale interstate project echoes the I-10 Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans, which promised to be a boon to business. However, residents and businesses left the neighborhood.
According to the “Restoring Claiborne Avenue” study prepared by Smart Mobility Inc. and Waggoner & Ball Architects, Claiborne Avenue had a registered 132 businesses in 1960. Now, long after the Claiborne Avenue Expressway was built, the area counted only 35 businesses in 2000.
Slicing historic African-American neighborhoods in the inner city for high-speed motorists is nothing new. According to The Shreveport Times, urban and city planners said “across the country, the construction of interstates destroyed the neighborhoods they sliced.”
These interstates instead brought cars, air pollution, noise and congestion to the neighborhoods. Elevated expressways incentivize residents to move to the suburbs, shifting money from inner city residents that could be used for public transit. It’s a no-brainer why people left.
According to NOLA.com | The Times Picayune, the 2010 “Restoring Claiborne Avenue” report called for the removal of the Claiborne Expressway, which, instead, would turn a “2.2-mile stretch of expressway between Elysian Fields Avenue and the Pontchartrain Expressway near the Superdome into a surface-level boulevard tied into the city’s regular street grid.”
This report also showed the numerous benefits to removing the expressway, including the of an eyesore, reducing noise and air pollution, increasing opportunities for public transit and promoting investment-eliminating blight. Removing the expressway would create economic development for New Orleans’ Tremé and 7th Ward neighborhoods.
Rich residents have the ear of transportation officials while low-income black residents have their communities bulldozed for elevated highways. In New Orleans, Tremé neighborhood residents opposed the construction of the highway, yet it’s still there today, according to the Tulane School of Architecture.
On the other hand, French Quarter residents opposed the construction of a six-lane Riverfront Expressway, an elevated expressway slicing the Vieux Carré and along the Mississippi River.
Had the highway been built, an overcrowded, noisy highway would block your Jackson Square pictures with the New Orleans Cathedral in the background if you were looking from the Riverwalk.
Local preservationists helped defeat the highway by touting the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.
However, the defeat of the Riverfront Expressway shows a tale of two cities in New Orleans: a city where wealthy white folks have their communities preserved and another city whose community and history aren’t worth fighting for or preserving.
Louisiana transportation officials should not build an elevated highway in Allendale. Instead, they should redirect transportation dollars to a roadway with sidewalks, mixed-use buildings and real estate and public transit.
Allendale doesn’t need to be a traffic corridor like Claiborne Avenue. History shows us this will harm the African-American community living there.
Many neighborhoods were sacrificed on the altar of economic development. Let’s not sacrifice Allendale, too.
Michael Beyer is a 22-year-old political science senior from New Orleans, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @michbeyer.