Mapping Racist Environmental Policies: How Urban Highways Created Food Deserts
Presenter Type
UNO Undergraduate Student
Major/Field of Study
Environmental Studies
Other
Environmental Studies with a concentration in Geography and Planning
Advisor Information
Faculty Advisor
Location
MBSC306 - U
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Start Date
24-3-2023 2:30 PM
End Date
24-3-2023 3:45 PM
Abstract
Mapping Racist Environmental Policies: How Urban Highways Created Food Deserts
On January 26, 1956, the Federal-Aid Highway Act was introduced as a plan to fund the development and construction of urban highway systems across the United States. It allotted $25 billion dollars toward a national interstate and highway system that would span 40,000 miles (Weingroff 1996). This was the start of a national infrastructure that would dramatically increase physical barriers of segregation, and amplify environmental injustice for decades to come, while at the same time being proposed as a policy that would improve the lives of people everywhere. Redlining and racially restrictive housing practices combined with the creation of the highways caused lasting negative impacts. A history of urban policies, that included racially restrictive housing practices, led to the creation of local highways that intensified environmental injustice by creating food deserts. This study will examine the environmental impact of racist infrastructure policies, on minority and low-income communities.
The creation of the highways was used as a means to demolish Black communities as well as draw lines of segregation using both where they were located and the design of the structure itself. The indicated was done by building the freeways through Black communities to displace and remove residents from their homes. The “slum clearance” included in the actual construction was a way the structure design itself was used to further segregation. This segregation and the barriers put in place through the construction of the urban highways influenced the rise of food deserts in low-income and minority communities. Suburbanization, white flight, and racially restrictive covenants were all factors that increased the frequency of food deserts and their prevalence in low-income and minority communities. Due to the health effects caused by lack of access to proper nutrition, food deserts have become a prevalent example of environmental injustice. With the number of health issues linked to inadequate nutrition, environmental injustice is demonstrated in this way in many low-income and minority communities. Overall, this shows that the development of urban highways has intensified environmental injustice through the food deserts it helped create.
Scheduling
9:15-10:30 a.m., 10:45 a.m.-Noon, 1-2:15 p.m., 2:30 -3:45 p.m.
Mapping Racist Environmental Policies: How Urban Highways Created Food Deserts
MBSC306 - U
Mapping Racist Environmental Policies: How Urban Highways Created Food Deserts
On January 26, 1956, the Federal-Aid Highway Act was introduced as a plan to fund the development and construction of urban highway systems across the United States. It allotted $25 billion dollars toward a national interstate and highway system that would span 40,000 miles (Weingroff 1996). This was the start of a national infrastructure that would dramatically increase physical barriers of segregation, and amplify environmental injustice for decades to come, while at the same time being proposed as a policy that would improve the lives of people everywhere. Redlining and racially restrictive housing practices combined with the creation of the highways caused lasting negative impacts. A history of urban policies, that included racially restrictive housing practices, led to the creation of local highways that intensified environmental injustice by creating food deserts. This study will examine the environmental impact of racist infrastructure policies, on minority and low-income communities.
The creation of the highways was used as a means to demolish Black communities as well as draw lines of segregation using both where they were located and the design of the structure itself. The indicated was done by building the freeways through Black communities to displace and remove residents from their homes. The “slum clearance” included in the actual construction was a way the structure design itself was used to further segregation. This segregation and the barriers put in place through the construction of the urban highways influenced the rise of food deserts in low-income and minority communities. Suburbanization, white flight, and racially restrictive covenants were all factors that increased the frequency of food deserts and their prevalence in low-income and minority communities. Due to the health effects caused by lack of access to proper nutrition, food deserts have become a prevalent example of environmental injustice. With the number of health issues linked to inadequate nutrition, environmental injustice is demonstrated in this way in many low-income and minority communities. Overall, this shows that the development of urban highways has intensified environmental injustice through the food deserts it helped create.
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