Inner Loop North Part 1

 Urban highways have been getting a lot of attention recently, especially through the lens of race. In "The Color of Law" Richard Rothstein explored how red lining by the federal bureaucracy induced greater segregation in US cities by race, and Sec. of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said that "racism is physically built into some of  our highways".

I've written about the extent to which Rochester's neighborhoods are segregated. The patterns of the city continue to map to the history of redlining, the policy of the government to split up cities by neighborhood to determine which property would have mortgages insured by the government.

https://twitter.com/salimfurth/status/1409987611796586499?s=20

 

The red areas of this map correspond to the economically distressed and racially segregated areas of the city today. And it's no surprise that when urban highways were being planned they came to these areas, and it may come as little surprise that now highways are being removed it was in the eastern portion, with the whitest population, and highest property value that change came first.

As highlighted in this tweet: https://twitter.com/salimfurth/status/1409987611796586499 The eastern section was removed, and reconnected the White neighborhoods of Rochester, the Black and Hispanic neighborhoods to the north remain just as separated from downtown as ever.

The economics of the whole matter only makes sense. Projects of this kind are run on a cost-benefit basis. In this case the eastern inner loop removal only made economic sense. It was lightly trafficked, cost a lot of money to maintain, and the property values surrounding the eastern loop made for attractive development opportunities and could bring in more tax revenue for the city. In this case all of the interests aligned.

Stepping back to the conception of building the highways, the planners thought it would be win-win. On one hand, people would be able to move around the city in a matter of minutes. Rochester prided itself on being able to get between pretty much any two points in the city in ~15 minutes by car. There was the underlying assumption that this transportation throughput corresponded to economic activity. And if you feel like you must put a highway somewhere it makes no sense to destroy the highest value property. Paris would not remove the Louvre for the sake of a highway.

And on the other hand it cleared out the parts of the city that were dragging down areas surrounding it, clearing out slums where crime was endemic, drugs were sold, and it cost a lot to keep a security force present. Many argued that removing the residents from such blighted locations would only be good for them.

The Rochester before the inner-loop and the Rochester after the inner-loop are two entirely different cities. 1951 vs 1965

This isn't even the final form of the loop, and already much of the downtown area was cleared out for parking, garages, roads and interchanges. This is expensive infrastructure, and the land that was taken for such use for the most part doesn't pay much in the way of taxes to the city. People used to live downtown in Rochester, but at present it is a space for a few mostly empty office buildings, some hotels, museums, government buildings and a smattering of bars and restaurants.

One of my favorite sites that compares historic maps of Rochester to what things look like today also show this change in the northern section of the city.

The railroad has been there for a while, it's division of the city is nothing new. But the northern section of the inner loop also prompted a whole redesign of the surrounding roads. Blocks were expanded, the area north of the loop no longer has the grid pattern it started out with. Larger lots with apartment buildings, parking, and "greenspace" take their place.

The loop itself  chewed up a couple blocks of resitential housing, ate up half of Franklin Square Park, butted up against what was a really beautiful post office, and split off a really pretty train station from downtown. The Rochester Central station that used to sit at that site was something really special, but it was torn down in 1965, around the completion of the Inner Loop.

 Inside the loop the streets were, and remain, a complete mess. unlike the orderly and efficient grid of places like NYC or DC the streets have a disorganized charm. Only now they are mostly parking, in the days before the automobile the city would have been a lot more fun to walk around.

https://twitter.com/salimfurth/status/1409987611796586499?s=20 https://twitter.com/salimfurth/status/1409987611796586499?s=20

https://twitter.com/salimfurth/status/1409987611796586499?s=20

https://twitter.com/salimfurth/status/1409987611796586499?s=20