Hastings Street was the center of Black business and entertainment in 1950s Detroit. But in the 1960s all businesses and shops were ordered to relocate to make way for I-375 — a giant, four-lane sunken freeway. Over a mile of Hastings Street and its surrounding land was turned over to developers, dismantling the once thriving epicentre of Black life in Detroit in order to create a high-speed thoroughfare from downtown to the surrounding suburbs. Hastings Street was home to more than 300 Black-owned businesses, including restaurants, doctors’ offices, and even eight grocery stores. Hundreds were forced to relocate or close permanently. Today, there isn’t a single Black-owned grocery store in Detroit, the Blackest big city in America. In cities across the U.S., these new freeways were disproportionately routed through communities of color. From Detroit to New Orleans to Miami, this construction helped contribute to the decimation of the culture, political power, and economies of Black America amidst the peak of the Civil Rights movement.  “Throughout the country, urban freeways were routed through Black neighborhoods, resulting in the malicious division and forced displacement of Black neighborhoods, as well as local Black economies,” said Regan Patterson, an environmental engineer and current fellow at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. But this infrastructure is hitting the end of its lifespan, and communities are now debating what to do with their legacy highways.   In Charleston, South Carolina, officials decided to double down, spending $3 billion to widen a freeway through predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods. Others, however, are questioning whether to remove them altogether, righting some of the wrongs done when communities were bifurcated so many years ago.  Detroit has chosen the latter. Rather than rebuild or repair I-375’s aging bridges, the Michigan Department of Transportation, or MDOT, announced in 2017 that it would replace the sunken, four-lane highway with a street-level boulevard lined with sidewalks and bike lanes. The initiative, called the I-375 Improvement Project, would reconnect the local neighborhoods along where Hastings Street once stood, as well as create a thoroughfare from Detroit’s downtown to two of its biggest cultural hubs: the RiverWalk area and Eastern Market, the largest historic public market in the country.  Detroit joins the ranks of cities including San Francisco, Seattle, Milwaukee, and Boston in choosing to remove problematic roadways. Even more cities could soon follow suit.                     https://grist.org/equity/a-freeway-ripped-the-heart-out-of-black-life-in-detroit-now-michigan-wants-to-tear-it-down/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=weekly