Biden’s infrastructure bill aims to dismantle racist infrastructure

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Inside the $ 1.2 trillion infrastructure bill due to go to the United States House of Representatives this week is a provision to remove or renovate the federal highways that have divided the communities of color across the country, cutting them off from economic opportunity and deepening racial equality for decades. .

But funding for the Reconnecting Communities Initiative, which began as a separate bill before being added to the broader infrastructure package, has grown from a respectable $ 20 billion to $ 1 billion in legislation. before the House. The reduction has sparked discussions about the need to restore black communities and neighborhoods isolated by federal infrastructure projects, an outcome that advocates say is based on more than a century of white supremacist urban planning.

Someone at the forefront of this conversation is Joan Fitzgerald, professor of public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern, who recently wrote on the subject for The Conversation. Fitzgerald, whose work links issues of racial equity to economic development and innovation, or the so-called greenovation, says it is high time the federal government started repairing the damage caused by the racist infrastructure that have helped shape the economic disparities between communities of color and white communities.

We need to look for ways to address this discrimination and wealth, but it starts with where people live, says Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald says road networks that divide must be gone; but the question is what do we replace them with? This question will be explored, among a host of other topics related to climate justice, in a new book she is working on. The book will also attempt to explain the infrastructure solutions that are necessarily tied to the climate justice agenda, says Fitzgerald.

Northeast Urban and Public Policy professor Joan Fitzgerald poses for a portrait. Photo by Alyssa Stone / Northeastern University

But it’s unclear exactly what the effects of removing highways are, given that cities have historically ceded the land of dismantled highways to developers, whose highest and best incentives to use don’t exactly match needs. struggling communities, says Fitzgerald.

She argues that funding for the infrastructure bill is an opportunity to right the wrongs caused by federal policies that have marginalized communities of color and to add to an ongoing conversation about reparations, or racial redress efforts. , which are growing in the country.

Fitzgerald says the history of racist infrastructure began in the early 1900s, when racially restrictive acts began to appear in many American cities. Racial alliances could be found in property deeds across the country. These agreements included stipulations prohibiting people of color from owning property.

According to a common example, such properties could not at any time be ceded, mortgaged or rented to one or more persons of Chinese, Japanese, Moorish, Turkish, black, Mongolian or African descent or descent.

People of color have been forced by these restrictions to seek refuge in isolated neighborhoods. Exclusionary zoning laws would follow; then what is called redlining, which describes a set of racist lending practices that were in full swing in the mid-20th century. These factors effectively created many racially segregated neighborhoods that still exist today.

That’s why our cities look like they are, says Julian Agyeman, urban affairs expert and professor at Tufts University. We see our cities as a reflection of how they were planned. Urban planning, in this sense, is the spatial toolbox of white supremacy.

Fitzgerald and Agyeman are now working on building up whatever we can do to make neighborhoods more connected and greener. The benefits of green spaces are well documented: neighborhoods get cooler, reducing the urban heat island effect and improving air quality, among other things, according to Fitzgerald.

But Agyeman warns that greening alone will not revitalize historically isolated communities, as green spaces often accompany and invite gentrification, a phenomenon known as the green space paradox.

We compromised and co-opted sustainability, says Agyeman, replacing racism with sustainability.

The issue needs a major overhaul, say the authors, citing the lack of progress. The efforts of many American cities to tackle green infrastructure and climate change have resulted in haphazard acts of greening instead of any unified, concerted national strategy, Fitzgerald said.

There are good ideas to be found in many of these initiatives: reducing dependence on cars, funding public transportation, establishing community land trusts, and pushing for more affordable housing.

Gentrification could be slowed down if there are strong housing stabilization and affordability policies before a project begins, Agyeman says. But right now, the net effect of greening neighborhoods is whitewashing neighborhoods, and we need to change that.

Funding for the infrastructure bill could be seen as a form of restorative justice and an important, albeit symbolic, step in the healing process for millions of Americans.

What if we used the [Reconnecting Communities Initiative] funding, however small, as a form of restorative or restorative justice? said Agyeman.

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