Lost in the transit desert race, transit access, and suburban form

Bolan Lost in the Transit Desert Race, Transit Access and Suburban Form Diane Jones Allen University Spatial Development and Urban Transformation in China Cui Liu The Virtual and the Rea

Lost in the Transit Desert

Increased redevelopment, the dismantling of public housing, and increasinghousing costs are forcing a shift in migration of lower income and transitdependent populations to the suburbs These suburbs are often missing basic transportation, and strategies to address this are lacking This absence

of public transit creates barriers to viable employment and accessibility tocultural networks, and plays a role in increasing social inequality

This book investigates how housing and transport policy have played theirrole in creating these “Transit Deserts,” and what impact race has upon thoselikely to be affected Diane Jones Allen uses research from New Orleans,Baltimore, and Chicago to explore the forces at work in these situations, aswell as proposing potential solutions Mapping, interviews, photographs, and narratives all come together to highlight the inequities and challenges

in Transit Deserts, where a lack of access can make all journeys, such as tojobs, stores, or relatives, much more difficult Alternatives to public transitabound, from traditional methods such as biking and carpooling to moreculturally specific tactics, and are examined comprehensively

This is valuable reading for students and researchers interested in transportplanning, urban planning, city infrastructure, and transport geography

Diane Jones Allen is currently Principal Landscape Architect with

DesignJones LLC, New Orleans, USA Her research and practice is guided

by environmental justice, and sustainability in African-American landscapes.She was previously a tenured Professor in Landscape Architecture at theSchool of Architecture and Planning, Morgan State University, Baltimore,USA

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Lost in the Transit Desert

Race, Transit Access and Suburban Form

Diane Jones Allen

University Spatial Development and Urban Transformation in China

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The Virtual and the Real in Planning and Urban Design

Perspectives, Practices and Applications

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Heritage-led Urban Regeneration in China

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Lost in the Transit Desert

Race, Transit Access, and

Suburban Form

Diane Jones Allen

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Title: Lost in the transit desert : race, transit access, and suburban

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Description: First Edition | New York : Routledge, 2017 |

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Identifiers: LCCN 2017004348| ISBN 9781138954243 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315667027 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Sociology, Urban United States | Local transit—

United States | United States—Race relations.

1 Theorizing the origin of and defining Transit Deserts 9

Figures and table

Figures

2 Lafitte Housing Project Claiborne Avenue, 2004 28

5 St Bernard Project Before and During Hurricane Katrina 51

6 St Bernard Area Means of Transportation to Work in 2000 53

7 St Bernard Area Population and Race in 2000 and 2010 54

8 St Bernard Area Peak Hour Waiting Time in 2005 54

10 Pines Village 2000 Census Population Density 56

11 Pines Village Median Household Income in 2000 56

12 Pines Village Median Household Income in 2010 57

13 Pines Village Means of Transportation to Work in 2010 58

14 Pines Village Peak Hour Waiting Time in 2015 58

15 Ms White in her Dining Room in New Orleans East, 2016 60

21 Mr Davis and acquaintance Mr Jones across from

23 Transit Deserts in Cook County Transit Future 99

27 Zip Code 21206 Baltimore, Maryland 117

Table

Foreword by Naomi Doerner

My mother arrived in America from Tegucigalpa, Honduras C.A., at the age

of 18 She was undocumented with $80 U.S to her name and the promise

of work cleaning houses Soon after arriving in Miami, Florida, she joinedher sister in Chicago, Illinois I was born at Cook County Hospital duringthe summer of 1978 For the first several years of my life, we lived inLawndale, a predominately poor, working-class Black and Latino immigrantcommunity, just east of Cicero and west of Chicago’s Southside

My earliest memories are of my mother waking up well before dawn toget ready for work She held several jobs—cleaning houses, working at ablue jean factory—and she also took turns babysitting children in theneighborhood Each morning, we’d sleepily get ready, eat breakfast and thenhurry on about our day

She and I walked, rode the bus and took the “L” train everywhere—to

go to the nearest grocery store, doctor’s appointments, the laundromat, myGodmother’s home where she’d watch me while my mother worked, andthe library where she took English lessons in the evening We relied on publictransportation, as unreliable as it was We needed it to reach the people,places and services that comprised and facilitated our daily life

I couldn’t have known it then but those experiences of taking in the sights,sounds and scents of our block, our neighborhood, the city’s Southside andbroader area every day on our walks, bus rides and train rides, they’d leave

an indelible mark on me They sparked a curiosity about why the people,places and services we encountered were where and how they were Manyquestions percolated in my young and curious mind Why was the onlygrocery store we could buy all our food a few neighborhoods away, but not

in ours? Why in the winter did plows pack the heavy snow so high that we’dhave to wait nervously in the middle of a busy street for the bus? Or whyafter my mother’s evening English class at the main library branch, did we

often have to walk a long distance home in the dark rather than take thetrain, the way we had arrived?

I’d constantly pester my mother with these questions to which she’d oftenanswer, “Mija, asi es la cosa.” Which translates from Spanish to English as,

“Daughter, that’s how it is.”

It’d be years before I understood how and why the places we inhabit,neighborhoods, cities and regions, have been shaped by history and policies.But, I kept asking these and other questions, which eventually led me to NewYork City where I attended graduate school for urban planning and publicpolicy And through my studies, I began to find many of the answers I’dbeen seeking

For instance, I learned that in the 1920s and 1930s, the private autoindustry worked to redefine streets as dangerous places meant only for cars.They created public campaigns and coined terms such as “jaywalking,”invented to mean that pedestrians didn’t belong in city streets

I also learned that in 1944 the G.I Bill—coupled with Federal HousingAdministration insurance—minimized risks for builders, banks, and savingsand loan associations, which encouraged developers to build new, single-family houses on the outskirts of cities across the U.S for veterans’ families.But, not all veteran families were deemed eligible for loans Racial discrim -ination and bias heavily impacted who did and didn’t receive the loans and,thus, who would and wouldn’t have a pathway to building economicprosperity and middle class wealth

In addition, I came to understand that federal funding for highwayexpansion, in place since Frankin D Roosevelt’s New Deal, expanded underEisenhower And that without public subsidies, privately owned transitsystems were intentionally left to deteriorate Streetcars disappeared asGeneral Motors bought bankrupt systems across the country and replacedthem with buses, which fared poorly in cities once White flight took shape

in the subsequent decades of urban renewal programs

Studying the landmark case of Brown v Board of Education in 1954,

which ended the era of legalized segregation through the doctrine of

“separate but equal,” helped me understand how self-imposed residentialsegregation already underway in the U.S was reinforced by and fed urbansprawl, forever changing public policies, funding and services within cities,municipalities and regions, concentrating wealth in mostly White suburbancommunities and poverty in many Black and Brown immigrant urban corecommunities Meanwhile, millions of African Americans living in southernstates and new waves of immigrants migrated to cities, like Chicago, to findwork in the first half of the twentieth century, adding to the density andneed for and strain on public services and resources

Urban renewal projects from Baltimore to Chicago to New Orleans, where

I live now, were carried out under different names by different city adminis trations from the 1940s on, made possible by the U.S Department ofHousing and Urban Development under the Housing Act of 1949, initially,

-and then the Housing Act of 1954, the same year of the Brown v Board

of Education ruling The policy provided Federal grants meant to clear

“blight” and “slums” with housing and highway projects, which werealways predominately low-income communities of color These policies,funding structures and racially biased planning practices have left legacies

of entrenched poverty in many low-income communities, which cities andcommunities continue to grapple with today

Lawndale, where my earliest years were spent, was one of the decimatedneighborhoods hit hard by urban renewal, though I didn’t know it when Iwas young But that was the answer to why our community looked, soundedand smelled as it did Access to public services and resources for my mother,

my neighbors and myself was a daily struggle The only way out of povertythere was to access opportunities elsewhere, outside the desert And we couldonly do this by relying on transportation, which, again, wasn’t reliable.When I think about how we’d have fared if we were forced to live in one

of the many cut-off exurbs or suburbs of Chicago, like many poor immigrantsand communities of color are being forced to today due to the rising cost ofhousing, I don’t think we’d have found our way out of the desert I believewe’d have remained lost in poverty, lost in the transit desert

In the pages of this book, I’ve found many more answers to the

ques-tions I’ve sought as a transportation justice advocate and planner Lost in

the Transit Desert: Race, Transit Access, and Suburban Form is the first

comprehensive comparative analysis to explicitly and unflinchingly examinethe racially discriminatory policies that intentionally hollowed out oncethriving Black and Brown communities in three major U.S cities—Baltimore,Chicago and New Orleans In addition to detailing the historical context ofthe conditions that exist in many of these communities it also discusses thetrends and forces of urban and transportation policy that, if unaddressed,have the potential to lead to the further marginalization of vulnerable peopleand populations As such, the book offers hope through stories of per -severance, resilience, and thoughtful solutions

It’s abundantly clear from U.S history that indeed our federal governmentand many of those carrying out urban renewal policies and implementingthese projects were misguided and lost their way, blinded by racial bias andprejudice But we no longer have to remain lost nor do communities have

to remain lost in transit deserts either

This book offers advocates, academics, and practitioners a roadmap,tracing the past to the present and toward a future where communities, bigand small, can create pathways to fair and just neighborhoods to live, raisefamilies, and prosper.

All we have to do now is act upon the solutions offered herein by theauthor, Diane Jones Allen, to chart a new course forward

New Orleans, January 2017

Naomi Doerner is the Transportation Equity program manager at the

City of Seattle’s Department of Transportation She’s also the principal andco-founder of Seneca Planning, a transportation equity research, planningand advocacy consultancy Additionally, Naomi is a co-organizer of TheUntokening, a national collective and professional development network ofleaders of color creating fair and just communities She serves on the Boards

of ioby and PlayBuild; holds a Master of Urban Planning from New YorkUniversity’s Robert F Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, a Bachelor

of Arts in International Affairs and a Certificate of Geographic InformationSystems from Kennesaw State University; and recently re-located to Seattle,Washington from New Orleans, Louisiana

Blindness to the experience of others is most often a choice I am not proud

to say that I have driven, in the comfort and convenience of my automobile,blindly by people standing on corners, often in dark and cold conditions,waiting for buses Through acknowledgment and opening my eyes, I gainedgreater awareness of the challenges of transit access experienced by particularpopulations This awareness created a desire to understand the greaterimpacts of limited transportation access and find solutions for the transitunderserved residing in Transit Deserts The process of working on this bookexposed me to the relationship of many of the greater problems of oursociety—including gentrification, homelessness, unemployment, displace -ment, and access to education—to transit equity I must thank all those whomade the outcome of this exploration more than it ever would have beenwithout their contributions

An honest and balanced investigation of Transit Deserts would not bepossible without the voices of those that dwell within them daily, andexperience the challenges of limited access to employment, social connec -tions, and necessary services I wish to thank Gertrude Daigle, Maria Darnel,Rosemary White, Willie Davis, Edward Logan, Seffonzo Dorsey, DougWilliams, Kristen London, J W Tatum, Mr Mathews, and Natalie Moore,for sharing their truths and experiences with me You provided me an insightinto the real-life causes, impacts, and challenges of transit inequity Withoutyour stories this work would ring hollow I know that some of theexperiences were difficult to relive, but I so appreciated your trust, and Ihope this work proves me worthy of it

Time, space, and resources are literally essential to any researchundertaking I would like to thank Director Camille Anne Brewer and theBlack Metropolis Research Consortium for the Fellowship which providedaccess to libraries and archival institutions allowing me to do primaryresearch in Chicago I would like to acknowledge Regina Irizarry and

Wanquin Su for their assistance in research that was not only necessary butfundamental to this work Thank you for your time, enthusiasm, and criticalthinking I know you will always do great things in the world I would alsolike to thank Edith Jones for editing and encouragement Importantly, Iwould like to thank M Austin Allen III not only for editing, but forchallenging me to take risks, thinking through my suppositions, sacrificingprecious time, and supporting me through to the end.

No one mentioned here, or any of those that helped and are not listed,

is ever least, especially Ronald Jones You are one of the most well-read,intelligent, and complicated people I know I so value your knowledge, andthe doors you opened for me in Baltimore You provided entrée to peoplethat would have never talked to me without your sanction I will appreciateyou to the end

The homes of the Baltimore Middle East community surrounding theprestigious Johns Hopkins Hospital appeared hauntingly vacant, and Iwondered what had happened to the families that had dwelt in the squareblocks Had they vanished, and now inhabit a better life in a place ofprosperity and equity? It was 2006, I was undertaking research along with

a sociology professor, Pamela E Scott-Johnson, Ph.D., at Morgan StateUniversity, who was examining the broken, familiar ties to place and socialnetworks that had to be renewed and reconfigured in the new environments

in which the residents of this former community—Baltimore Middle East—had been transplanted Most of the residents had been relocated, mainlythrough Section 8 vouchers, to the outer urban areas of the city away fromthe downtown and the urban core in which they once lived It was alsodetermined, through interviews and census records, that most of the relocatedresidents lacked vehicles and used the public bus system to travel to workand other services I was interested in working with Dr Scott-Johnson onthis particular community because my mother had grown up in this neigh -borhood on Ashland Avenue in the 1930s and 1940s I remember vividlythe stories she and her sisters used to tell of their bustling neighborhood andsitting out on the polished marble steps of the red brick row house they lived

in, entertaining friends and admirers Now all the row houses, marble steps,and neighborhood activity were gone, demolished so completely that hardly

a memory remained

My research was to focus on the physical form of the areas of relocation,the areas that would be a new frontier for those evacuated from a uniqueand vernacular geography It could easily be hypothesized that the move fromrow house to detached structures or garden apartments, ironically named theDutch Village, where some of the residents of this particular community ended

up, was a major change in lifestyle, impacting drastically social inter action.Hanging out on the front steps, barbequing on the sidewalk or playing ball

in the street, were foreign and often unsanctioned forms of socialization inthis new social and physical space I studied the new environments, and thevariety and impact of the accrued losses, attributable to the move to this alienspace These new communities were residential in character, with local streetsrestricting instead of accommodating through traffic, while commercialarterials bordered on both sides by parking lots adjacent to the street createdvast concrete vistas The main difference from the old to new environmentswas not only the difference in density and the configuration of social space,but how blatantly difficult the task of navigating the streets and accessingthe public transit service would be Realizing that transportation would be

a major challenge facing the relocated residents, for it would impact the ease

of getting back downtown to work, needed services, friends and family leftbehind, and the familiar, I had a new focus for my inquiry

Without the benefit of mixed-use urban development, including walkingdistance to shopping, employment, services, and the closeness to thebusinesses in the downtown, and with easily accessible transit out of reach,the quality of life for the relocated, transit dependent residents becameadversely impacted Not only would relocation from the transit rich innercore to the outer urban and inner suburban rings affect the quality of lifeand transit access for the transplanted residents, but this shift in populationwould transform these auto-oriented, mostly residential communities fromperceived oases void of urban blight into Transit Deserts Transit Desertsare noted for a greater demand for mass public transportation than avail -ability, and for people walking along streets with non-existent sidewalks,and standing for long periods of time on corners with no buses in sight; inthis new geography there are clear signs of an imbalance of transportationoptions within the same metropolis The automobile-driven, outer urbanareas of the city where the numbers of lines and available service decline,did not become Transit Deserts until the arrival of the thousands of newresidents with travel destinations throughout the city and with no auto -

mobile This is not just a Baltimore phenomenon, but a national phenom

-enon caused by public policy, and economic and social/cultural shifts which, of course, have various causes, and outcomes that can be seen in every major American city The characteristics that are unique to “TransitDeserts” derive from neighborhood form and physiography, the time spent and the ease of accessing transit, the lack of access to basic amenities

of urban living, and, most importantly, the very visible demographics of itsinhabitants

I was having a discussion about Transit Deserts with a transportationscholar who pointed out that Transit Deserts also include the manyneighborhoods where there is no mass transportation, and the residents

are quite happy with that, and have resisted public transportation enteringtheir communities I disagreed with this characterization, because neighbor -hoods are only Transit Deserts if there is a demand for accessibility that is usually fulfilled through different modes of transportation and that demandcannot be met And particularly cannot be met because of race and one’sinability to immediately move from the location of the desert I agreed thatthe cultural themes of “nimbyism (not in my backyard),” “anti-urbanism,”

“the prioritization of auto-mobility,” and “the othering of transit”—which

is that bus users are problematic people, and that buses would bring the

“wrong” people into their neighborhood—discourage public tion in certain communities There are major reasons people moved toneighborhoods of suburban form, including the perceptions of prosperity,less density, spaciousness, better schools, and less crime Not until a realdemand for transit arrived in the shape of the new transit dependentdemographic, who often came because of development policies and pressures,did these neighborhoods become lacking in transit access, because open orpublic access wasn’t desired and often was blocked The arrival of the newdemographic of transit dependent residents transformed neighborhoods thatare suburban in form, previously dominated by residents who rarely or neverutilized public transit and were happily dependent on their cars, toneighborhoods where there is now a demand for public transportation that

transporta-is not being met Thtransporta-is transporta-is the definition of the Transit Desert to be used inthis book, and the key elements including form and physiography thatconstitute a Transit Desert will be described herein

A neighborhood does not have to be in the suburbs to be a Transit Desert;many are located within the historic boundaries of the city limits, with formsthat were driven by the availability of the automobile This manifests inneighborhoods that through density, land use and zoning mix, and physicalform don’t encourage walking and easy connections Second, there areplaces where public transit exists, but are still considered Transit Deserts ifthe access is difficult, with riders traveling more than a quarter mile frompoint of departure to a transit stop, and long wait times once at the stop.Third, and most importantly, is the factor of demographics If there is nounmet demand or potential ridership, there is no Transit Desert The demo -graphic characteristics of the potential ridership of these deserts in theUnited States are most often people of color, low income and, of course,those without cars This demographic has social, cultural, and economicparticulars that are often hindered through insufficient and limited publicaccess to transit For example, as new digital forms of transportation accesscome on board this specific population of low income, minority riders arebeing left further behind

An exploration of the causes for the demographic shift away from theurban core by African American populations, and into the urban core bythe White and affluent populations is essential for understanding the creation

of the Transit Desert The transit dependent population, who are most oftenAfrican American, and lower income, migrated from the urban core to areas

of little transit service, pushed over time by urban renewal, housing pricesand policy, zoning, and economic development policies, combined withsocietal and market forces that changed the urban landscape Essential tothis discourse is the fact that lower income residents have felt forced or havebeen compelled to leave their existing communities in search of better livingconditions or affordable housing Gentrification, which included the influx

of middle and upper income residents and capital investments in areas onceinhabited by low income residents, has driven rent and tax increases, takingmany properties out of the multi-family market, and causing racial andeconomic divides Gentrification is fueled by attraction and consumption(Stein, 2011) Consumption happens when landlords realize that they cancharge higher rents to tenants with more money and that there are potentialtenants who are willing to pay Attraction comes about when the interestingarchitecture, arts and entertainment venues, shopping, inviting streetscapes,shorter commutes, and other amenities become appealing to White and moreaffluent residents These forces combine to create a demographic shift Thesepopulation shifts are also helped by local governments that institute zoninglaws and ordinances, the relaxation of renter protection laws, and capitalimprovements, such as bicycle tracts, streetcar lines, and park/trails Thedismantling and reconfiguration of mostly African American inhabited, nowold-style, public housing was also a major factor producing economic andsocial change in some cities The lack of social and economic investment inaffordable housing, urban schools, job creation, and crime prevention alsocaused African American families to seek other geographies, including themythic suburbs, for a better way of life

Life in the Transit Desert is filled with the challenges of traveling to work,

school, shopping, and accessing social and cultural networks Lost in the

Transit Desert: Race, Transit Access, and Suburban Form, through the case

studies in New Orleans, Baltimore, and Chicago, will detail the experiences

of African American residents living in this new physical environmentthrough quantitative data, such as mapping, and also through qualitativeresearch including interviews, photographs, and narratives Drawing on first-hand accounts of the struggles to cope with the new environment and accesstransit, this book will highlight the inequities and challenges faced in theseareas The challenges are many, especially if one migrated from a walkableenvironment, with transit stops at efficient distances, and timely levels of

transit service, to an auto-oriented environment with few of these elements.The personal stories of trying to get to and keep one’s job, get to the doctor

or other needed services, to visit relatives who no longer live down the street

or next door, to go to the grocery store and then haul purchases longdistances expose the hardships and the impact the geographical shift has ontransit access, and, therefore, quality of life for those living in the TransitDesert

This book will include a discussion of mainstream alternatives to existingpublic transit systems, including biking, carpooling, etc., but will also exploreculturally specific alternatives unique to those living in the desert In studyingAfrican American culture from the diaspora through the Great Migrations

to the North I have used the term nomadic as a way to describe the tions that often require movement and improvisational approaches to the

solu-problems presented by life in the American landscape In the book Third

Cinema: Exploration of Nomadic Aesthetics and Narrative Communities

(1994), Teshome Gabriel uses the figure of the nomad as a means of elab orating an aesthetic appropriate to Black and diasporic cultures Teshomedescribes the nomad as one that does not travel simply to get to a particulardestination, but journeys because it is the nomad’s life It is difficult to denythat African American existence, in the United States, holds a legacy ofjourney and migration, voluntary and forced, from the African Continent

-to North America, from the South -to the North, from the country -to thecity, from the city to the outer urban rings and suburbs To some the use

of the nomad is not accurate for it may put forth the image of AfricanAmericans willingly moving to new environs in denial of the strong forcesthat would not allow them stay to in place, and it is at odds with the idea

of the lack of mobility Many African Americans, having been moved fromtheir communities and moved many more times before finding home again,

do feel like nomads, and this is not a positive emotion Intrinsically, AfricanAmericans have always wanted connections to place, being moved aroundsince the first forced relocation from the African Continent For the discourse

on solutions, I interpret nomadic as related to improvisational and as a way

to claim and make positive nomadic behavior and survival skills In the book

I will refer to these solutions or adaptations as improvisational, which con nects to the broader reinterpreting of landscape with urban tacticalmovements This creativity is based on survival, the necessity of travel, andthe desire to connect to family, commerce, employment, opportunity, andquality of life

-Theoretically the problem of Transit Deserts could easily be solved,through meeting the demand for transit by the new residents; making theareas less suburban in form by increasing walkability through adding

sidewalks and infill development; increasing the number of bus stops insuringriders that they won’t have to walk further than a quarter mile to a stop,and providing a signage and up-to-date digital information to keep ridersabreast of the vehicle location in relation to the individual; increasing servicelevels, by increasing the number of vehicles on each line, using digitaltechnology to determine location and schedules of riders to decrease waittimes; and providing a safe, comfortable service with convenient connections

on multiple routes Transit density, of course, is based on demand TheTransit Desert is a unique landscape with a physical appearance that beliesits reality It possesses a form and infrastructure that denies the fact of thepopulation changes that call for an increase in a mode of transportation for which it was not originally configured Therefore traditional ways of cal culating demand would not be sufficient, and a means to determine thehidden demand residing in the Transit Desert is required Catalytic fore - casting can be used to evaluate the underserved in a Transit Desert landscapebased upon placing potential riders at every parcel of land within a transitshed Numbers derived from the maximum frequency of use force accurateplanning and meaningful efforts towards accessible public transportation.Acting as a catalyst for increased ridership, every parcel of land serves as alocation from which a trip can be generated, but it then takes into accountthe complexity of the demographics, physiography, and lack of access asexamined and explained within Transit Desert neighbor hoods “Catalyticforecasting” more accurately justifies increased transit access, increasing lines, frequency, and accessibility, and, most importantly, can assist in thelocation of transit stops, thereby increasing overall efficient movement in the city

To forever erase the Transit Desert from our geographic mapping therewould need to be increased transit subsidies and investment in publictransportation infrastructure throughout entire metropolitan areas to resolve the myriad of issues of transit inequity and provide transit access forall This, however, will require a long process and shift in priorities andthinking that will ignite the economic, social, and political will of citizens,govern mental and regional transportation authorities, and the private sector

to work together to clearly define, acknowledge, and solve the issues of in equity and deficiency in mass transit It must be noted that many cities across the United States are forming coalitions and attempting to tackle theseissues, but with the continued and, in some jurisdictions, increasingmovement of urban, transit dependent minorities and poor to outer urbanand suburban rings, mobility is an immediate issue impacting economicsurvival, and quality of life In the meantime, the transit dependent mustmaneuver the Transit Desert What are the creative and traditional policy,

-planning, and design methods used to meet the transportation needs for basic survival in these communities? The overall focus of this writing is toexpose the causes, stories, challenges, and coping methods of those lost inthe Transit Desert.

1 Theorizing the origin of and

defining Transit Deserts

The creation of the Transit Desert

The Green Book was a guide to lodging and travel routes for the many

African Americans who journeyed north and west during the Great

Migrations from 1910 to 1970 The Green Book was invaluable for safe

travel to the “Promised Land.” This envisioned landscape promised housing,employment, services, liberty, and the equitable pursuit of happiness The

“Promised Lands” of Chicago, Los Angeles, and Baltimore reached, therewas no Green Book to be had for maneuvering and acquiring housing andtransportation access in the new urban environments, which were neitherpromised, affordable, nor safe One had simply arrived into a nightmare ofuncertainty However, the one certainty was what W.E.B DuBois attributed

to the southern city and urban centers across the United States—“the colorline” (DuBois, 1903) DuBois stated, “Usually in cities each street has itsdistinctive color, and only now and then do the colors meet in close proximity All this segregation by color is largely independent of that naturalclustering by social grades common to all communities” (1903, p 125).American society has from its origins been organized in a hierarchicalmanner by race, class, religion, age, and lifestyle which has, as a conse quence,promoted inequality in living, working, and social conditions Large AfricanAmerican populations were thrust into neighborhoods that were the leftovers

of earlier immigrants, and suffering from demolition by neglect By the birth

of the Transit Desert the Green Book was not large enough to serve as a

stop for a broken door in a Chicago tenement building, and only functional

as a historical reference guide The book though, while small, was yetextremely powerful in its time, and saved many a life en route across hostilepassageways through a perilous American landscape However, by the early1960s, the illusion of the “Promise Land” that would motivate one to use

the Green Book was accelerating towards an abrupt and frustrating ending.

The book simply became a memory of a nomad’s journey through a nation

pulling its citizens towards the urban core And, the urban unrest of African

Americans from Harlem to Watts spilled into the streets as a manifestation

of that lost dream The promise for Blacks was ending as Whites wereexperiencing an ever expanding incentive to move out of the same “PromisedLand,” supposedly driven by economics and not race to what Steven Conn(2014) would imply was a way back to the illusion of the “New Frontier.”Samuel Schwartz shared how it worked

qualifying families could get thirty-year loans for purchasing new singlefamily housing but only five-year loans for repairing or renovatingexisting structures And since the places where the money stoppedhad streets but neither streetcars nor buses, and sometimes not evensidewalks a car was an absolute necessity

(Schwartz, 2015, p 22)

If the 1940s, 1950s and into the 1960s were dedicated to moving Whitepopulations into automobile showrooms and new car lots, and speedily, outalong urban freeways, out to the newly formed mirages of suburban living,then the late 1950s and early 1960s were also dedicated to, on one hand,

an urban unrest by occupants left to make sense of the central city, and, onthe other hand, action by city and federal officials and developers of wipingthe central city clean of these occupants and its buildings to remake themodern city

If the City of New York were able, as it has indeed been able, in the lastfifteen years to reconstruct itself, tear down buildings and raise greatnew ones and has done nothing whatever except build housingprojects in the ghetto it would not mean for Negroes when someonesays Urban Renewal that Negroes simply are going to be thrown out inthe streets, which it does now

(James Baldwin, 1965, 35:51–36:47)The consequential scattering of African American and poor populationsamidst and into undesirable urban rings into a Bantustan-like existence, withthe added lack of public transportation infrastructure, is what helped tocreate the Transit Desert—a desert where no guide book could get onethrough the vast void of opportunity or lack of access

Like deserts anywhere, Transit Deserts were not and are not permanentlyfixed on their edges in time and place, contracting or expanding as the socialand cultural context of the desert shifts Rather they are the sites of contes -ted and oppositional and often illusive boundaries, signs, and spaces of

negotiated ecosystems and urban living However unsure of the edge, transitdeserts are clearly definable and ever present once one attempts to movearound in them; not only by form but by the race and class of their residents.The Transit Desert, thus, at once can seem like an arrival for those deprived

of the Promised Land, and as a fulfillment of an American Dream of less, palatial spaces But, at the same time, it is also alienating for anyonedepend ent on transportation infrastructure like buses or other forms ofaccessibility These physical spaces are simultaneously a place where one

end-must traverse significant distances to reach an urban center, with a journey

proportionately connected to the location and size of the suburban spatialdream Without a car, one might quickly be trapped, spending hours tonegotiate and navigate to the central part of the city Residents of a TransitDesert may rent or own property, but the place is not their doing nor doesthe desert’s future rest solely with these families and individuals who dwell in this land

In short, the urban image must be read as ideology, as an historicalproduct, as a gesture with a past the surface calm of the city imagebelies its constitution as the condensation of the struggle between variousorganized group expressions about alternate use and design

(Gottdiener and Lagopoulos, 1986, pp 215, 216)Transit Desert structures have relied upon and been formed by thehistorical forces that drove the creation of American public transportation,American housing, and similar forces that created American urban renewaland urbanist reformulation strategies—easily identified through theiremployment of techniques that coaxed, coerced, and forced shifting ofmassive amounts of identifiable urban and suburban populations away fromand towards the urban center in systematic, incremental ways, giving orimposing names upon these places with specific geographical boundaries,defining them conveniently as neighborhoods Thomas J Sugrue gives a clearsense of these forces at work before and right after World War II

Three Exclusionary devices, each of which had been perfected in the twodecades proceeding World War II, gave postwar American metropolitanareas their racially segregated character First, private but legallyenforceable restrictive covenants Second, federal housing policiesenacted during the Depression Third real estate agents staunchlydefending the right of homeowners and developers steering blacksinto racially mixed or all-black neighborhoods

(Sugrue, 2008, p 202)

These forces turned their efforts into policies that turned tax dollars intocelebrated freeways, an immense automobile manufacturing and distributionindustry intertwined with an ever expanding oil industry, endless suburbs,and a recent reimagining of the urban center precisely when the center ofthe city was at the crossroads of contested realities, deciding between anunpredictable future of retaking the place through new buildings or causingthe near, total collapse of the core One only need critically assess thecircumstances that led to the recent histories of cities like Detroit, Cleveland,Youngstown, or Buffalo that were declared finished, momentarily broughtthrough the challenges of desolation and bankruptcy and finally to the brink

of a total meltdown, only to be transformed as great symbols of economicrecovery once taken out of the control of local administrative decisions Allbegan to recover with massive movements of African Americans pushed out

of the cities and to the margins of its management

A number of governmental and private market forces coalesced to targetand transform particular communities into “Transit Deserts.” Majorityresidents were shifted or encouraged to move to the outer rings, with theadvent of the freeway system, and, subsequently, with urban renewal, manymembers of minority populations were later shifted to these same, now oldersuburbs, providing the reason for the mostly White populations to move outeven further, initiating what would be identified as “urban sprawl,” only tohead in a 180 degree turn of events back towards the center of the city Thesesuburban landscapes built originally for low density, took on economic anddemographic shifts, resulting not only in a new paradigm for the areas oftransformation, but the reorganization of the metropolis, structuring ininequality as a normal yet transformative part of everyday life in Americancities Most importantly, those who were often forced to move and movethe furthest were minority populations with low income, little or no vehicleavailability, and a lack of transferable social networks and collective efficacy

in the new environments, free-falling into a man-made maelstrom Thismobilization came about through many dynamic economic and politicalgains for some at the expense of those who could least sustain themselvesthrough these changes, creating even harsher and more expensive contrastingrealities in the inner city Lack of accessibility made prices rise for AfricanAmericans, which pushed many more out of desperation to attempt evenharder to move on a quest for access to better schools, affordable homes,and safer living conditions Racial divides were and are encouraged ascentral to population movement and have worsened as a critical factor inthe shaping of the Transit Desert, an expanding phenomena in the urbanUnited States, shaping metropolitan landscapes, particularly those of the past

60 years

As was the case in every Levittown, by Levitt’s orders, not a singleresident was black In metropolitan Philadelphia between 1946 and

1953, only 347 of 120,000 new homes built were open to blacks Langston Hughes described black neighborhoods as the “land of ratsand roaches, where a nickel costs a dime.”

(Sugrue, 2008, pp 200–201)and as further stated by Conn:

The end of World War II and the 1980s roughly bookend a period ofurban crisis in older industrial cities and the radical transformation

of urban space in cities across the United States In the 1950s and 1960s the twin transformations brought about by urban renewal andinterstate highway programs sprang from the anti-urban impulse andleft the cities reeling from their effects Simultaneously, the perceivedfailure of the Federal urban renewal program turned the cities intophysical mani festations of a failure of government liberalism Thereaction against the city in the postwar period was undeniably connected

to the question of race as the African American population continued

to urbanize But race simply amplified much of the anti-urban impulsethat had already been circulating in America during the first half of thetwentieth century

(Conn, 2014, p 9)The documentation of these settlement patterns, forcing African Amer -icans into ghettos of substandard living conditions, often examined in urbanplanning and sociology discourses, frequently misses the inextricable linkage

of anti-city to that of racism, as well as the harsh precision of the emotionalaccounting of the impact of such movements or confinements of populations,

as is evident in the multiple narratives among African American artists,writers, and culture bearers, who often doubled as the chroniclers of thisparticularly peculiar kind of racialized urbanism But like the sociologistsand urban planners who focused upon neighborhood, the neighborhood unit became an important currency in the African American discourse onurban space John Edgar Wideman’s Homewood or August Wilson’s

The Hill, both in Pittsburgh, or Gloria Naylor’s Women of Brewster Place

in Baltimore, or Gwendolyn Brookes’s Chicago in Sunset and the City, or

even later Marlon James’s Bronx neighborhood compared to his Eight Lanes and Copenhagen City of Kingston, explode with these narrativesexamining the collapse of any viable form of a humane urbanism operating

in the city

Let me be clear from the outset We didn’t do this neighborhood toourselves Neither we negros who inhabit the dead end where we’re stucknor we Americans doomed to undertake the task of saving a world wefear by destroying it first.

(Wideman, Fanon, 2008, p 99)

The socioeconomic movements that restructured the metropolis, manu factured gentrification, the linkage of destroying the central city only toreconstruct the urban inner spaces to again serve upper and middle classinterest; set policy that dismantled public housing; created urban revital -ization projects that removed as well; underfinanced certain infrastructureonly to build it anew; and located and built new transportation infrastructurethat disrupted older streets and traffic patterns ending long establishedneighborhoods In short, the demolition caused by urban renewal projects

-of the 1960s sparked the creation -of the Transit Desert through policies andplanning that severed fixed, public transportation infrastructure from thoseAfrican Americans who had to move away African Americans, who werethe focus of the relocation, scattering, and submerged migration strategiesmobilizing families in the thousands, once confined to a problematicneighborhood within the older parts of the city now left to float with nosocial, cultural, or physical infrastructure to operate as was done in the past

in the center of urbanism, or more precisely, the urban core.

The battle for the soul of the urban core is and has been a fight for the

physical center of the city, the meaning and identifying features of the core,

as well as the cultural imagination of the place The problem with governmen

-tal officials, corporations, and developers is and was how to define the urban

core while purposely physically abandoning it and living or operating miles

from it “The most salient feature of postwar suburbs was their political isola tion from the increasingly heterogeneous central cities” (Sugrue, 2008, p 205)

-Claiming the urban core has been the struggle for geographical control of

the central landscape, the amplification of the contradictions of urban-ismagainst anti-urbanism Transit Deserts are a manifestation of the growth of

this contradiction The strategic fight for the urban core, as the most con

-sistently contested real estate, driving identity of the central city and, by proxy,its neighborhood(s) as the representation for the region, and thus standing

in as the magnet and symbol of a conglomeration of neighborhoods—therepresentation of that particular city to the rest of the globe

The urban core could and does stand in symbolically for numerous

contested identities of culture and place including those occupying the core

The occupiers, often operating from a survival mode, define the urban core

in ways that give voice to inequalities and unjust practices within the core,

are often disliked by and in opposition of governmental officials, corporationsand developers, and those forces who caused the Transit Deserts, and aredriven by a utopian like branding of place where all ideas are openlyexpressed and shared.

The city, essentially and semantically, is the place of our meeting withthe other, and it is for this reason that the center is the gathering place

in every city the city center is always felt as the space wheresubversive forces, forces of rupture, ludic forces act and meet

(Barthes, quoted in Gottdiener and Lagopoulos,

1986, p 96)

At one point in recent history, Hip Hop culture, born out of the

devas-tated urban core of the Bronx, identified itself with these urban centers of

America, establishing ownership of place at one point, by telephone area

codes as a stand-in for actual boundaries of their particular urban core.

As the technology quickly changed so did the ways to express identity andplace Ownership and identity as central to the Hip Hop cultural expression

have defined the urban core quickly adjusting to different scales with

ease, whether East Coast or West Coast, street specific, crew specific, blockspecific, localized issue specific, or global in reference The articulation ofthese problematic urban places are front and center in works of many artists

from Queens-based A Tribe Called Quest “God Lives Through,” 1993, to

the West Coast and global references of Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright,” 2015.Simultaneously because of the ever expanding suburbanization of Whitesthat happened since the 1940s, being from Chicago, Baltimore, or NewOrleans, or any major American city has not meant that one actually hasever lived within the legal municipal boundaries of that particular city, ratherone could live 30 miles away in another small city or suburban neigh -borhood, yet somehow see oneself dually as living elsewhere but an integral

part of the urban core through, for instance, identifying with a basketball,

football, or baseball team or public gatherings in parks for cultural or civicevents; activities that by their very structure bring diverse groups into thesame space Ironically, “Whites saw their neighborhoods as the antithesis

of the black ghetto” (Sugrue, 2008, p 206) yet often desired to imagine

occupying the urban core where those Black ghettos were located The consequential move to possess this urban core has forced the ever increasing

push of people out into the growing Transit Deserts

Conn argues that the city has two important functions: (1) as economic

center and (2) meeting place And, that density and the public realm or public

sphere are two essential drivers for making urbanism work.

density enables—often forces—diverse and heterogeneous populations

of people to interact with each other Those interactions whethereconomic or social, casual or intimate, create the cosmopolitanism that

is the hallmark of great cities that have so excited some and terrifiedothers The way in which cities work to bring different peopletogether in close proximity is causally connected to the creation of apublic realm or a public sphere anti-urban Americans imagined andtried to build a variety of alternatives to the city that were less denseand presumably less diverse as well For many of these anti-urbaniststhe early twentieth century technologies of electricity and the automobilewould make decentralization possible without losing the economicadvantages that come with urban concentration Those who offeredcommunity as the alternative to the impersonality of the city, however,seldom acknowledged that any community is necessarily defined by thosewhom it includes and thus also by those whom it does not

(Conn, 2014, pp 4, 5, 6)Thus Conn also reveals the third driver, or at least the major factor thatshapes the two drivers; the racially constructed movement of people, basedupon race, that serves as a core component for understanding the TransitDesert and the central organization of the American city and the catalyst for

determining the public sphere as well as density factors in the formation of

an urban core.

Indeed, examining the decentralization of the city reveals race as connected

to the drivers of density and the public sphere going back to the lead writings

of Thomas Jefferson, who sought to keep America rural from the foundingdays of the nation, by at least defining the country as small communities ordelimiting urbanism to his vision of the site of a non-city, anti-urbanist,central seat of national government, devoid of the cultural and economiccores of the country in the founding of Washington, DC—a non-Paris, non-Philadelphia, or non-New York Jefferson railed against the ills of urban life

in his thinking, a way of life that could dehumanize the hearts and minds

of America Jefferson instead preferred himself to live as part of the greatestcontradiction in the founding of the United States, through the anti-urbaninstitution of slavery Alexander Hamilton’s urbanism of New York Citywith its public spheres and density positioned the new America between itand the full scale enslavement practices of Jefferson’s Monticello Jeffersonlived within and thus could advocate for an African American subjugatedpresence—one that could en masse be bought, sold, and moved about theAmerican landscape at will with no impact upon the majority’s democraticpractices

The Transit Desert is rooted in the founding of the nation Entrenchedwith core ideas in the United States are that uneven or problematic livingspaces and conditions could be attributed simply to the marketplace andindividual choices The Transit Desert continued to evolve over decadesthrough policies of removal and the lack of government assistance in disasterevents, in the case of New Orleans in 2005 in the aftermath of HurricanesKatrina and Rita, and the urban policy decisions that have decimated specificneighborhoods in cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore from the 1960s

to protect wealthier communities (as with Chicago project dwellings likeCabrini Green dismantled, and their populations displaced from thewealthy Gold Coast area); to physically quarantine poor populations inworking class exurbs to make room for the production of entrepreneurialprojects (such as the building of sport stadiums), the construction of newhighways, or the development of new properties

(Dyson, 2006, p 76)Most importantly, relocations are not haphazard, but are targeted throughzoning regulations that limit the number and location of multi-family units,and Section 8 subsidized housing vouchers which target certain neighbor -hoods (Greenbaum, 2008) Scattering and/or dispersal of communities create

a deficit in cultural and physical infrastructure and social capital which inner city residents once used for survival, disconnecting established networks

of daily assistance, including help with transportation and childcare.Displacement resulted in serious problems for individuals and groups: “thesense of belonging, which is necessary for psychological well-being, depends

on stronger well developed relationships with nurturing places” (Fullilove,

2013, p 43)

The Transit Desert is an American invention most identifiable by race andneighborhoods as the central organizer of infrastructure, and the develop -ment of roads, housing, town centers, and urban cores from the beginnings

of urbanism in the United States These urban and suburban developmentsorganized around race have resulted in specific outcomes that can only be

effectively managed or remedied through solutions that acknowledge racialinequality, brought on through race based, coaxed, coerced, or forced massmovement of populations as a primary force in shaping the American land -scape Recognizing the existence of the Transit Desert is the first steptowards reintegrating the city into a set of democratic and just living arrange -ments, thereby renewing our ability to restructure, redevelop, and navigateurban life anew.

The expansion of the Transit Desert post-World War II

The end of World War II changed the way the nations of the world saw oneanother and certainly placed the United States in the most awkward ofsituations America at once became the lead voice and vision of democracybuilding a universally humane globe, while simultaneously being burdened

by past practices, in Wideman’s (2008) words “doomed to undertake thetask of saving a world we fear by destroying it first.” Public policies, includ -ing federal housing, transportation, economic development, state and localzoning and land use, environmental, locally administered service, andtaxation policies, all combine to shape the restructuring of the ever changingmetropolis Political, social, economic, and legal institutions all developedand structured the policies we live with today By the mid-1940s the division

of the metropolis, reinforced by the drawing of hard municipal boundaries,making race and class the central organizers, created a distinct form ofspatialized inequality in the United States Twenty years later, the initialretaking of urban space from the poor was the outcome of many strategies

to revitalize the city The commodification of public housing by the 1980s,once meant to philosophically even the playing field in a democracy, worked

to eliminate the political, economic and social structures that stood in theway of reshaping the metropolis, disregarding any meaningful conversationwithin a public sphere on maintaining a diverse and yet dense city Urbanrenewal and recent housing policy such as “Hope VI” and “Choice Neigh -borhoods” and their connection to market forces brought housing cost, and wages, out of line, creating a shortage of affordable housing which forced the movement of many low income residents to outer urban areas(Schwartz, 2013)

Social programs and most importantly federal housing policy ing World War II were a palette of both discrimination and opportunity that, at first-look, could seem balanced and navigable Hope for democraticaction outweighed the despair of racially driven unjust policies The United States following the war was rebuilding Europe and, in 1948,standing as an opposing view to an Apartheid South Africa One year later

follow-Kurt Weil, who had escaped the tyranny of a Europe that had gone mad

with war and persecution, brought Alan Paton’s 1948 novel Cry the Beloved

Country, an important commentary about race and urbanism, to Broadway

as Lost in the Stars New York could be seen as a place to lead the world

into a United Nations, more democratic expression of city living, certainlymore than an equally wealthy counterpart in Johannesburg Public housingbecame that important symbol of democracy in action where all citizensmight be offered a standard of livability unmatched by any country aroundthe globe

Public housing quickly became segregated housing And segregatedhousing defeated the objective of democratic housing policies, a settlementfor something much less Public housing ultimately became islands ofdysfunction and isolation for the poor, mainly African Americans, operated

by the federal government to preserve future real estate for developers Thiswas not the mission as first perceived and taken on under Roosevelt, Truman,and Eisenhower by Federal Housing Administrator Frank Horne, who had

to solve the problem of accommodating the housing shortage following thewar combined with the population shift caused by the second GreatMigration (Lindberg and Carlson, 2009)

In 1954 Frank Horne, doctor, former college president, HarlemRenaissance poet and housing expert, envisioned advocating, through one neighborhood at a time, the transformation of American housing fromsegregated to desegregated as essential for the growth, equity, and formation

of a just and open United States The Supreme Court ruling of Brown v.

Board of Education of Topeka (1954)—the reversal of Plessey v Ferguson

(1896)—strengthened Horne’s resolve to fight for ending housing discrim ination Alexander von Hoffman identifies Horne as a key participant in the Open Housing Movement Recruited by Mary McLeod Bethune to workwith Robert Weaver as part of the Black Cabinet of President Franklin D.Roosevelt, Horne helped develop strategies for advancing “freedom, liberty and birthrights” through efforts at desegregating public and privatehousing as a means to force Americans to realize the central role of racebased American housing, which placed the credibility of the Americaneconomy in an inverse relationship with American democratic practices His witnessing of the converse destruction and preservation of urban environ -ments during World War II led him to think about at least two distinctrebuilding strategies in the construction of the postwar cities of the United

-States: one the tabula rasa and the other the decentralization of the

urban core Horne continued to work with the more widely known RobertWeaver who became a founder of the National Committee Against Discrim -ination in Housing, a research entity dedicated to the elimination of

discrimination in housing The influential organization helped to make NewYork City the first city to ban discrimination in private housing.

“The shift of the Negro population into the core of cities, the rise of theirincome and recognition of a new market by private builders and lenders,the intervention of government and the concomitant rise of the civil rightsissue in housing all come to focus in the rise and spread of the urban renewalconcept,” Frank Horne stated in a 1954 speech “After Fifteen Years: TheRecord and the Promise.” By 1955, Horne was subsequently fired byEisenhower for attempting to move too fast and deliberately in the creation

of integrated urban environments, as a means to meet the challenge ofproviding housing equity for African Americans The firing ended whathistorian Arnold R Hirsch called “his seventeen-year tenure as the mostoutspoken, high-ranking minority official in the nation’s housing agencies”(Hirsch, 2005)

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) could have created an AfricanAmerican middle class housing market, after World War II, of scatteredenclaves on still vacant land, allowing the African American middle class toenter the private market, and the creation of varied residential patterns andhousing equity, as opposed to planned mono-racial developments

I had seen an originally middle class area over crowded, over used, and underserviced degenerate into a racial slum—too many people com -pressed into too few homes with the concomitant debilitation ofstructures and people which is always associated with racial ghettos.Even with their income doubled and trebled Negros were and are barredfrom any new housing between 1935 and 1949 while some 100,000private homes were built for Whites, less than 300 of them were availablefor Negros

(Horne, 1954)African Americans were deliberately partitioned away from ownership ofreal estate, while the national trend was to rapidly grow home ownership

“In 1930, only 30 percent of Americans owned their own homes; by 1960,more than 60 percent were home owners Home ownership became anemblem of American citizenship” (Sugrue, 2008, p 204)

The passage of the 1949 and 1954 housing bills allowed inner citycommunities of the poor to be shuffled as part of the federal urban renewalprograms and highway development which made access to downtownseasier for suburban Whites (Arena, 2012) FHA and Veterans AdministrationHousing policies helped to push the poor to public housing, benefiting theWhite and upper income households, thereby reinforcing the racial, class,

and gender hierarchies necessary to American style capitalism Both programsinstitutionalized the private real-estate industry’s use of discriminatory racial covenants and legal statutes that restricted sales and leases to ethnicand racial minorities, in particular African Americans State policy, FHAguidelines, and federally backed mortgage insurance that was approved ifthe home was situated in a development with a racial covenant, assisted the segregation of African Americans (Arena, 2012) For example, in the well-

known Supreme Court Case of Hansberry v Lee, November 12, 1940,

Hansberry, an African American, was sued by Lee, a White resident, forviolating the restrictive racial covenant by moving into an all-White

subdivision in Chicago (Hansberry et al v Lee et al., 311 U.S 32 (1940)

(via HeinOnline U.S Supreme Court Library)) Federal subsidies, providingfor housing mortgages benefiting middle and upper income households,compared with underfunded public housing, reinforced the stigmatizationand segregation of a race of people

Public housing separated the perceived deserving from those perceived asthe not so deserving Initially public housing was a means to subsidizeresidences for White families It then became a means to house minoritiesand the poor, and ultimately evolved into a place that was defined by thefabrication that it housed those that wanted to live off the government, didn’twish to do better, and didn’t deserve more The objective was to contain asmany African Americans in the urban core as possible, with the AfricanAmerican middle class on the outer banks of housing developments Not allAfrican Americans went to housing developments, although they were stillsegregated Inner city homes formerly occupied by Whites were taken up byAfrican Americans, with the greater rate of African American populationgrowth in a neighborhood relative to Whites exacerbating the rate of racialoverturn

While many whites stayed their ground, many more decamped whenblacks moved nearby—and many more simply avoided racially mixedcities altogether Between 1950 and 1960, 700,000 whites moved toPhiladelphia’s suburbs, at the same time that the city lost 225,000 whitesand gained 153,000 blacks Suburban Chicago gained more than onemillion whites, but the city lost 399,000 whites and gained 320,000blacks

(Sugrue, 2008, p 205)African Americans were largely concentrated in housing in the obsoletecity core, with little opportunity to enter the mainstream, private market

The fact that African Americans lived under segregated and in dangerousconditions by choice gained currency with city officials and was perpetuated

by the White community (Citizen’s Action Council Program Records, 1975).These ideas were implemented by real-estate dealers who specialized inblockbusting and breathing life into racial fears that stirred up racialsuccession and housing sales Redlining was also a means to make Whiteresidents move It consisted of assigning risk scores to neighborhoods based

on the age of the buildings and the moving in of nonwhites and immigrants.Redlining was a federally backed program carried out by the Home OwnersLoan Corporation (Fullilove, 2013) In March 1968, the Kerner Commissionindicated that the United States was on the course of permanent establish -ment of two societies: one predominately White located in the suburbs,outlying areas and smaller cities, and one predominately African Americanlocated in the central cities As a counter to segregation and the Black revoltshappening across the United States, the commission recom mended theconstruction of smaller scatter site developments (Urban League ResearchReport, 1968)

Equally as impactful was the process of urban renewal often nicknamed

by African Americans as “urban removal.” In the 1950s many civic leaderswere hopeful that urban removal would build the democracy

On the one hand they drew strength from the memory of the fight againstfascism in World War II; on the other, they envisioned rebuiltneighborhoods as internal bulwarks of freedom that were necessary inthe newly emerging Cold War Neighborhood boosters and civicleaders kept their focus on the new cityscape they hoped to usher in,smoothing out the complexities of class and race with an expansivevision of urban renewal’s importance for the postwar world

(Zipp, 2010, pp 164–165)

A 1998 documentary by Ric Burns on the history of New York City and

Steven Conn’s book (Americans Against the City, 2014) clearly lay out the

magnitude of the devastation caused by Title One, Urban Renewal, as afederal policy for moving African Americans en masse from the city andrepurposing urban land for specific economic gain among private devel-opers The tragedy was the intent of legislation that was supposed to aid theimpoverished urban dwellers, but instead was used to displace them, andmake way for schemes of urban wealth, particularly at the expense of urbanpoor, African American and Latino communities Many never found housingagain, or were relocated to segregated low income housing projects, on an