A group of researchers from Northeastern University and Tufts University has called for funds from President Biden’s infrastructure bill to be diverted to dismantling “racist infrastructure” which is currently disproportionally impacting minority neighborhoods in the United States. The stance is set out in a new thought piece on The Conversation written by Joan Fitzgerald, a Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, and Julian Agyeman, a Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University.

The researchers focus on the network of urban highways built across the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s, which the team posits was deliberately run through neighborhoods occupied by Black families, and other people of color, thus physically distancing the communities from jobs, opportunities, and urban connectivity. Scholars identify the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act as the beginning of a trend whereby transportation planners used highways to form an infrastructural barrier between Black neighborhoods and the surrounding city: a trend which environmental justice author Robert Bullard dubbed “transportation racism.”

Video via NBC News on YouTube.

“As scholars in urban planning and public policy, we are interested in how urban planning has been used to classify, segregate and compromise people’s opportunities based on race,” the team said. “In our view, more support for highway removal and related improvements in marginalized neighborhoods is essential.”

At present, the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill allocates $1 billion for this purpose; a considerable decrease from the $20 billion previously proposed by Biden. “As we see it, this funding represents a down payment on restorative justice: remedying deliberate discriminatory policies that created polluted and transit-poor neighborhoods like West Bellfort in Houston, Westside in San Antonio, and West Oakland, California,” the team continued.

The team point to studies such as one which found that Black and Latino communities are exposed to 56% and 63% more particulate matter respectively from transportation than white residents due to their proximity to highway infrastructure. These neighborhoods are also disproportionately zoned for polluting processes such as incinerators and power plants.

As America’s 1950s highway system begins to deteriorate, at least 28 cities have begun the planning or process of removing sections which have been identified as negatively impacting Black communities. The team points to an example from 2014 in Rochester, New York, where almost one mile of highway was removed to allow for the reconnection and integration of neighborhoods previously divided by the infrastructure. Since then, walking and cycling in the area have increased by 50% and 60% respectively, while commercial and affordable residential development has intensified. The team notes that the $22 million in public funds which supported the project have generated $229 million in economic development.

“Simply removing highways won’t transform historically disadvantaged neighborhoods,” the team continued. “But it can be a key element of equitable urban planning, along with housing stabilization and affordability, carefully planned new green spaces and transit improvements.”