Freeways

 Avila’s chapter about freeways sheds light on the negative impact the construction of freeways had on the way people lived in Los Angeles. What I found interesting is that freeways had a similar impact on cities and the people who lived in them throughout the United States.  Up until recently, I had never really taken into account the downside of freeways.  Like Maia mentioned in an earlier post, when I went to Disneyland, tomorrow land was my least favorite part, but it still shaped the way I viewed automobiles, in the sense that I couldn’t wait until I turned sixteen and would be able to drive on a real freeway.  I learned in high school about the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, and how great it was that people living in suburbs now had easy access to the cities. 

What Avila points out is that demise of the streetcar and public transportations, “had dire consequences for communities such as Watts and Boyle Heights, which became isolated centers of racialized poverty in the subsequent age of the freeway” (189).   The freeways were great for business men who lived the “suburban good life,” but they were awful for the people who lived in the existing neighborhoods that the freeways crossed over, like Boyle heights, a community that today is viewed as one of the worst parts of Los Angeles.  This is due in part because, as Avila points out, it is surrounded by three freeways – golden state, Pomona, and Santa Monica.

A few months ago, I read an article on Robert A. Caro’s Pulitzer Prize winning book The Power Broker, a book about Robert Moses, the master planner of New York City.  Up until that book was written, Moses had been seen in a positive light, as someone who did well for New York by planning out the freeways and bridges.  What Caro points out is that Moses had racist tendencies when building the freeways.  One example is that he would build freeways low enough so that busses wouldn’t be able to go under them, which meant that communities, like the Bronx, were sometimes trapped and not able to take public transportation into other parts of the city.   I found it interesting how Caro took a man that was idolized for many years as building such a great city, and shattered that image by exposing the underlying racism there was in his construction of New York.  I’ve never taken into account where freeways are built, or how they are built, and what affect that may have on the way people live their lives.

In San Francisco, I saw how the tearing down of freeways had a positive impact on the community in which it went through.  My dad was telling me about how on the embarcadero, a street alongside the waterfront, used to be aesthetically unpleasing, with a huge double deck freeway that led to the bay bridge.  This was hard for me to believe, because today I think of the embarcadero being a beautiful street with amazing views of the bay.  But it wasn’t until an earthquake struck in 1989 did the city decided to tear it down.  The neighborhood went from being somewhat of a slum, to becoming a tourist attraction with great restaurants and shops.  Once the freeway was torn down and the city began to rebuild the community, property values of the homes around the embarcadero shot up. 

On a more personal level, my own city began talks of building a freeway over a primarily Latino neighborhood about ten years back.  This happened when I was a child; I remember thinking that it would be kind of cool to have a freeway close by.  Luckily, I wasn’t the one making the decision.  The community came out very strongly in protest against the construction, and as a result, the idea never got past the planning stages.  I am happy that I can now look back and see how that would have negatively impacted the neigborhood, and how my views of  transportation and freeways have become more critical.