Revamping some of the national highway system makes sense—but basing those decisions on vague notions of social justice is not the way to do it.
The Interstate Highway System, which the U.S. began constructing in the 1950s, has a complicated legacy, to say the least. Boosters see it as the greatest infrastructure program undertaken in the country during the second half of the twentieth century, connecting vast areas in new and important ways, unlocking largely untapped regions outside of cities that helped spark a new kind of middle-class living. Detractors accuse the system’s planners and builders of emptying out cities and encouraging the rise of low-density suburban sprawl. That process, critics argue, prompted “white flight” to the suburbs, while stranding poor minorities in urban neighborhoods disfigured by the highways that bisected them. To these critics, the Interstate Highway System is just another example of America’s racist past.
