How Chattanooga is working to right the wrongs of urban renewal
When the freeways came to Chattanooga over half a century ago, Black neighborhoods like Violet Hill and Blue Goose Hollow disappeared into the dirt, sacrificed to asphalt.
Notched between Lookout Mountain and Raccoon Mountain, the city rose to 11th place in the U.S. for per capita spending on new highway projects during the urban renewal era. At the same time, Chattanooga built Westside, a 200-acre, warren-like public housing project for those displaced by what many white Americans saw simply as progress.
Several generations later, the brick tenements are now a “distressed asset,” set for the wrecking ball.
Hemmed on nearly all sides by highways, Westside is a physical manifestation of the economic and social dislocation caused by some of America’s massive infrastructure projects. Peter Norton, associate professor of history in the engineering school at the University of Virginia, calls it “the Berlin Wall effect.”
Embedded in the highways
What do smaller roads offer?How did we get here?One win in an ongoing battleAddressing aging roads and redressing harm
