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113 9 Stop the Road: Freeway Revolts in American Cities Beginning in the late 1950s, a nascent freeway revolt emerged in San Francisco and a few other cities. Typical of the countercultural sixties, the anti-freeway movement accelerated nationally as Interstate highway conInterstate highway connterstate highway construction began penetrating urban America and knocking down neighborhoods . Pushing expressways through the social and physical fabric of American cities inevitably resulted in housing demolition on a large scale, the destruction of entire communities, severe relocation problems, and subsequent environmental damage. Opposition movements sprang up to defend neighborhoods against the “concrete monsters” rolling through the cities. Initially, the struggle pitted grassroots citizen organizations against the state and federal highway engineers and administrators who directed these vast construction projects. Later, freeway fighters sought the intervention of political leaders or used legal challenges to halt Interstate highway projects. In some cities, freeway construction coincided with black political empowerment and the rising civil rights movement, developments that took on added significance when black neighborhoods were targeted by the highwaymen. In other cities, protecting parklands, schools and churches, historic districts, and sensitive environmental areas stimulated citizen movements to “Stop the Road.” At some point in the 1960s, then, many Americans came to focus on the negative consequences of highway building, as opposed to the apparent advantages of modern, high-speed, express highways serving a nation locked into lengthy commutes and multiple stops for work, school, and shopping.1 The timing, progress, and outcome of the emerging freeway revolt differed from city to city. With a few exceptions, in cities where the highway builders moved quickly in the late 1950s to construct the urban Interstates, the inner beltways, and radials, opposition never materialized or was weakly expressed. In southern cities, where African Americans had little political leverage at the time, building a freeway through the black community was not only the most common choice but the choice that generally had the support of the dominant white community. Where 114 INTERSTATE freeway construction was delayed into the 1960s, however, neighborhood leaders, institutions, and businesses had time to organize against the highwaymen. In some cases, freeway fighters forced the adoption of alternative routes, even shutting down some specific Interstate projects perInterstate projects pernterstate projects permanently . In their writings, influential urbanists such as Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, Herbert Gans, and others provided a powerful critique of urban expressways and other redevelopment schemes. In the late 1950s, planners and policy experts also began questioning the Interstate proInterstate pronterstate program . The ink was barely dry on the 1956 Interstate bill when city planInterstate bill when city plannterstate bill when city planners began challenging the single-minded devotion of highway engineers to pouring concrete, urging instead the need for comprehensive planning and a balanced transportation system that included mass transit. In an influential 1960 article in The Reporter, rising urban analyst and future U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan criticized urban Interstates for their lack of comprehensive planning and potentially damaging impact on urban life and metropolitan structure. In later years, these arguments for coordinated planning, housing relocation, mass transit, and preservation of small-scale neighborhood life in the modern city resonated with freeway opponents and buttressed anti-highway movements.2 As a collection of discrete, bottom-up movements beginning at the neighborhood level, the freeway revolt shared many aspects of sixties countercultural and change-inducing activity. Typical of the time was rejection of top-down decision making, the normal practice of the highway establishment in routing and building highways. Freeway fighters sought citizen participation in important decision making on expressway routes and urban policy. However, the citizen army of homeowners and neighborhood groups usually came up against an inflexible bureaucratic force of state and federal highway engineers and administrators reluctant to yield professional and legal authority to popular protesters. Only when decision making on controversial Interstate routes became politicized and subject to litigation in the late 1960s and after did freeway revolters achieve a measure of success and satisfaction.3 The freeway revolt involved organization and political coalition building in defense of neighborhood and city. But each city had its own history, geography, demographic characteristics, physical structure, neighborhood patterns, political culture, and other distinctive features. These variations help explain why freeway fights had different histories and diverse outcomes from place to place. Nevertheless, successful freeway revolts generally shared several commonalities. First, persistent neighborhood activism, committed local leaders, and extensive cross-city, cross-class, and interracial alliances were needed to bring a high level of...

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