airshow502 Most major cities in Europe and smaller ones for that matter has extensive public transit system in place. If you live in a larger City in Europe you really don't need a car. In the US you can't really do without a car except New York City.
@@sourlemon83 European cities were even less designed than North American ones though (bar some exceptions like the Eixample grid of Barcelona), it's just that you can't cut through them because you hit thousand years-old monuments. Aside from some New England towns, you plow through a North American city and you won't demolish anything that's over 150 years old, nothing that has historical value and can't be rebuilt further.
They don’t care about the people... they never did, and never will... the entire system is about protecting the wealth of the elite... creating economy and other socially engineered games(travel, consumerism, spirituality, etc) to keep us(the middle and lower class slaves) busy enough to not revolt and riot and barge into the elites mansions and steel their ‘wealth’ and also make the system satisfying enough to motivate the individual to participate and also fight for the system...
@@camerontaylor7471 The examples used in the video show that the freeways that were removed were out of place because the city grew and changed since they were constructed.
Sorry to hear about that. I'm sure it was a tough to relocate. But I'm sure he was well compensated for. I5 is traveled by millions of people. What area did he live?
that's how a government owned by corporations not the people works: 1. the companies lobbies for something that people did not ask for. the most profitable are wars but here it's roads. 2. then the people pay for it with their hard earned taxes. 3. then the company keeps the profit even though we are the once that payed for it. 4. repeat
I lived in Miami for a few years (I'm from Santiago, Chile), and coming back to Santiago-which isn't a role model for pedestrian friendly cities by any stretch-was so liberating. I could actually interact with so many other people, and as a teenager, it gave me the freedom to go around and get to know my own city. Car centric cities are just so depressing.
In Ireland, highways (or motorways as we call them) go around cities. It might take a little longer to get into the city or town, but it helps traffic in the town out providing a route around. And also it preserves the cities.
Development is avoided outside them if possible to stop urban sprawl. The highways I was talking about are through roads, which pass the city to one side, and you have to leave them to get into the city.
lol, still better than all of the world, its that kid now, with all the liberal policies and these government controlled public transportation taking away people's freedom
@nishiljaiswal2216 don't be mad just because Americans actually has a real drug problem, and there are studies that lass cars actually improve quality of life
If you think that, you've obviously never tried to drive in the 50's before any freeways at all existed. You could barely leave your own town without it taking hours.
Fun fact, when automobiles first appeared on roads of course they had to share them with pedestrians, horse and carts etc. , after a spate of car's running over pedestrians the car industry ran a campaign to vilify pedestrians for been reckless on the roads they had used to walk on for thousands of years, guess who won.
+Shane Le Plastrier Taxi cabs are another corrupt facet of the industry. They shut down cheaper hand carts the chinese used. And now Uber is starting to burn the Taxi industry.
Which is super easy to say but hard to do in the real world, or in a game without unlimited $. What you CAN do, is leave room for those in the future though! :-) [in the real world it's because cities develop organically over time, so it's hard to predict how it will evolve and change. the opposite is China's 'ghost cities' where they did exactly what you said ;-) ]
@@e7venjedi Most efficient way to control transportation is to not control it and let companies buy the rights to highways, roads, and public transit from the government and remove any kind of certifications or city approval for adding onto highways, roads, or transit. Though this'll never happen cuz politicians have no incentive to do whats most optimal for the economy
Car travel is incredibly inefficient in dense areas. You can never build enough highways to completely eliminate congestion above a certain density. The problem was that the auto industry wanted to convert previously established cities where travel was based around walking and streetcars into cities where travel was entirely based around car travel, and largely they succeeded. The only US city with a car ownership rate below 50 percent is NYC. NYC was almost entirely designed and built around its extensive subway system, and there was no way to try and reverse it because of how ingrained it was in how the city functioned. The auto industry promoted suburbanization initially, because they knew it was going to raise the car ownership rate, putting more money into their pockets. They endlessly lobbied the government to support development in that way and tried to portray it as "the best way to live" and a symbol of status. They succeeded in getting most people to think that way, and it sort of just perpetuated to today. Try and find any scientific evidence that raising children in a closed off McMansion where they rarely are out in public and see the outside world is better than being in a city.
Collin Parsons I personally hold that it’s better to raise a kid out in the country where they and the neighbor’s kid half a mile away can go out and play in the woods and be kids
I agree. I’ve lived in NYC since 1989 when I moved here to go to college. Not having to own a car all these years is a no brainer. To me having a car requires so much time and energy. Not to mention the costs. A garage next to my building charges 600 dollars a month. NYC was able to defeat these highways because citizens elect people who represent their best interests. I can imagine in many other cities powerful right wing politicians only had corporations to represent. They had their brothers get the contracts to build the roads, or the houses they over into. There was zero political interest in city dwellers. Maintaining a cities Street grid or preventing half a city from being turned into a parking lot wasn’t a problem for these right wingers. Getting whites out of cities was another way of consolidating power. The could then gerrymander the city to keep state government in the corporations pocket.
nickys34 Suburbs are about white flight. This is where all new investment is by the productive taxpayers who move there. At least Europe puts their housing projects and slums in the suburbs and keep their large urban cities beautiful. America doesn’t have the political will to do this.
Quite possibly the most disruptive and damaging decision ever made to the quality of human life by the US government since the genocide of the Native Americans. you don't realize how horrendous and miserable American city life is until you visit Europe. North America is truly awful.
And many cities have a lot of extra bike lanes. In Münster for instance (Muenster, not Munster :D), there are even extra bike lanes on round abouts. They even have a bike "car" park.
We have also a few „fails“ like in US. For example A7 through hamburg. But its gone be fixed in the next few years. With 3 new Tunnels. 2 of them allready finished: construction of 3rd one starts now.
@Channel Oh I'm not disagreeing with the idea. It's solid, and makes perfect sense. In fact, I was brought up to believe that it was the primary reason for building our highway system. The other, support and pushes from the auto industry is new info to me.
I’m sure the military was top priority. I’ve thought about this when riding my bike on the riverside bike path in Sacramento. I’d be willing to bet the real reason for the bike path was never to benefit the citizens but as strategic paths for government use in case of emergency
Eisenhower felt the need to establish it after witnessing the efficiency of the Autobahn in Germany during WW2. So blame them for it, not us. I like cars too, if you have ever been to Europe you understand how less convenient traveling is due to lack of road infrastructure.
In normal countries, we have bypass highways that go around cities to keep congestion low. Highways are for going from city to city and when your destination isn't the city, you go around it. For travel in city, you have buses, metros and cars.
Interstates are a good concept, but I hate how they cut through the middle of towns. Luckily the interstate highway goes around the downtown area of my hometown in Missoula, MT.
+Justin Davis precisely that is the primary problem. You see it in places like detroit or LA where the highway acts as a physical wall or river dividing poor and rich.
+Steve W lol most likely the poor don't want to be near you either. It is good to have integrated neighbourhoods so that you don't see people cut off form jobs and what not
If the highway is built correctly, it doesn't have to slice a town in half. The area I am from has a large bumper to bumper interstate slicing it in two, yet most of the highway is elevated to allow city traffic to continue flowing as normal.
Precisely, we have learned a lot from an urban planning perspective in terms of how to build and properly plan infrastructure. We will also continue to learn moving forward.
Have you ever been forced to live along side one of these elevated highways??? The noise and pollution are unbelievable. Asthma problems are increased. Have you ever seen the junk that fall over the edge of these raised highways. People walking underneath have been injured as well as their homes and businesses!
+CptnJCFG Fun fact! You know that subplot in Who Framed Roger Rabbit about how they were going to get rid of the streetcars and build a highway through ToonTown to replace them? Yeah, that actually happened. The same companies who lobbied for interstate highways also lobbied city governments to get rid of public transportation so that more people would have to buy cars to get to work. Pretty shitty, right?
Highways are awesome, they’re super convenient compared to Europe especially in the winter or hot summer. The US has a much less temperate climate, people like to be inside a climate controlled car not freezing biking or overheating on a city bus. I hated visiting Copenhagen. Bikes are much more effort and take longer than using a car. And driving is a lot of fun too
This is basically the story of the South Bronx. The Cross Bronx Expressway could have followed a different course that took it through more industrial sections but it basically went right through integrated historic neighborhoods because nobody gave a crap about the residents there....And yeah, many of them were non-white. The moniker of "Urban Renewal" has always had a tinge of either "Minority Removal" or "Integrated Neighborhood Removal" to it. James Baldwin gave a really good talk on this and it was heartbreaking.
+phuturephunk Yep. And it isn't just highways -- 100 years earlier, railroads did this exact same thing. Except instead of ripping up homes and destroying neighborhoods, it separated cities into "poor" areas on the outskirts, and "well off" areas in the urban core -- hence the idioms "across the tracks," "over the tracks" or "wrong side of the tracks" in referring to the "bad" part of town.
+Andrew Saturn should've built quite a few of these urban/downtown interstates several decades ago either underground (either boring tunnels or cut-then-covering with some parkland/gardens/SOMETHING on top (Boston Big Dig/Downtown Montreal style)) or DIRECTLY next to railroad tracks to minimize the demolition of urban cores IMO (considering the complete decline in railroad usage the decades immediately following WWII)
We never did this in Australia. All of our inner city suburbs are mostly perfectly preserved and haven't changed much (in layout) in almost 100 years. The first highways were built here in the late 60s (though most construction occurred from the 1970s onwards), but they were non-intrusive and were later built outwards from the centre, not through the middle.
Libertarian - MGTOW - White Nationalist Australia is an island, they have to be very careful who they take in. White ppl where never intended to live in Australia, it belongs to aboriginals, just like NZ.
Atlanta was a tiny city before the highways. The communities around it were single stoplights or four way stops with dirt roads. If they remained tiny and quaint then little brill streetcars could have serviced them, HOWEVER YOU probably wouldn't be living there. If you lived in Roswell and took a train, it would take you hours to make the trip to the capital any time you tried it. Today you can make it in under an hour if you pick a non rush hour. All times and travels had their pros and cons. Often we see things in rose colored glasses. If we however stick 4,000,000 people on the pre freeway Atlanta Metro cityscape, it would be hell on Earth. It would look like Soylent Green.
Japan has highways right in the cities, but these highways are on the "second floor", while ground level is nice pedestrian infrastucture (or normal at least)
Still, the noise and air pollution around these highways is high which makes it sometimes unbearable to live in such areas. В общем, жопа полная. Если машины едут быстрее 50 км/ч, то находиться в пределах 50м невыносимо
They do especially in Tokyo, but not much on other cities. And they pretty much stop making more these days, they instead invested heavily more to mass transport. Railways are king in Japan and on major cities, they basically the one criss-crossing the cities on all levels (above, street-level and underground). Well at least they somehow manayge to make the pedestrian level under those highways still nice, but the thriving areas are still the open space areas where pedestrians are the priority and they often are always close to a railway station. Japan don't really rely on cars for transport except on country-side where there is less people living anyways, and yet some of them still have railways for commuting to the nearest city and they are efficient that you can rely on.
Great video. In Koblenz (Germany) we have the same problem. A major highway cuts through the city and you have traffic jams almost every day. I think a lot of the traffic could be removed by improving and subsidizing public transport.
Self driving cars that form linked 'trains' with other cars and coordinate so they never have to stop at traffic lights will be the solution to increase road capacity. The reality is that dense cities with multistorey offices and apartments need subways and underground roads. Its absurd to blame cars for the problems 10+ story apartments and offices create. Railways are utterly hideous in that they also cut communities in half. It all needs to go underground. The other solution is to stop flooding Germany and its cities with fakeugees from the middle east and Africa.
@@WilliamJones-Halibut-vq1fs There's so much wrong with this comment I don't even know where to begin. Pushing aside the disgusting nationalist "fakeugees" talking point, 10+ story apartments and other ways to increase the density and mixed-use of our cities contribute A LOT to making them better. Dense neighbourhoods mean people don't have to commute as far, mixed use means every essential need is at their doorstop, which profoundly reduces the need for cars in the first place. Sprawling, incredibly sparse suburban areas are the worst kind of places because they create a dependency on cars to get anywhere, and decrease the livelihood of a city as well. Cars are not the solution for urban planning of the future, and people have realized that. Get with the program. Self driving cars will make driving safer, but more driving is not necessary as it will only pollute our cities, and make them less walkable, livable and frendly. Railways are utterly hideous? But the huge as highways, built stacks upon stacks upon stacks on each other, are not? I understand you want to move everything underground but that is not economical for every area in a city, as it depends on local funding and even on factors outside of a city's control like the type of soil they have. Railways take way less space then highways by a very large amount. Just look at Tokyo and other Japanese cities.
It's interesting for me. Seattle build a huge freeway through their city and Vancouver Canada decided not to and built one on the outside of the city. Now Vancouver has a great transportation system to Downtown and room for the city to grow without being cut up by a freeway.
+BrothaJeff I was just thinking that. Vancouver is my home and its fascinating to look at the concrete monsters in American cities. Its so unfamiliar to me.
+BrothaJeff Aren't they burying the Alaskan Way? I hope they do. The amount of forward thinking put into that must have been limited because it totally cuts Seattle off from the Sound waterfront.
Im surprised there was no mention of the “Highway to Nowhere”/ I-170 in Baltimore. It was supposed to connect two highways together I believe. They leveled an entire community for like 2 miles of unused highway, and the surrounding “surface” streets make it even more useless.
Downtown Vancouver is on a peninsula, but the rest is sprawled on a blob of land, which is the metro, separated by 70 km/h roads that like to larp as highways. Downtown van saving grace was that little piece of geography they have.
Similar story in Birmingham, UK. We had a massive carriageway that carried traffic into the City Centre core in the 70s. After 20 years we discovered it destroyed most of the original culture, shopping and increased crime. We got rid of it in the early 2000's and now are regenerating areas with squares, public transport and more pedestrian areas. The city is better off without traffic inside the city.
Vids like this only convince me that Vox is one of the best franchises available on youtube. Thanks. Excellent piece. Kudos to the presenters and writers.
+geinikan1kan No, they really aren't. The turned this piece into yet another "evil America" story when that simply wasn't the case. They left out so much vital information and immediately made this about money and race.
Joe Blow Even though I know that digital culture is basically an illusion built with cheap electricity underpinning an ideological stance that makes connectivity a necessity, I still use the internet. 'S baby with the bathwater baby. Baby with the bathwater.
geinikan1kan Critical discussion is a great thing. Race bating is something else entirely. This video jumps almost immediately into "look at how bad this was". If you want a real discussion, go look up the "Dividing Highways" documentary from PBS from 1997. Its on TH-cam and easy to find. That publication did an excellent job providing insight into both the historical background, the benefits and the damage caused by superhighways.
I am a geographer, and my entire master's thesis focused on this exact topic - the impact of freeways on urban neighborhoods. The impact has included social, environmental, and economic. My case study was the Bruce Watkins Parkway in KC MO - protests caused the highway to now include stretches where one has to stop for stop lights.
The West End, a historically black neighborhood in my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, was almost entirely destroyed by forcing black people from their homes and businesses, and then demolishing most of the westernmost part of the neighborhood to build I75. My family lost their house that they had owned for 50 years at the time, and I75 runs right over top of where their home once stood. Our generational wealth was stolen from us, pried from our fingers.
@@Paonporteur Thats the reality of a lot of interstate highways going straight through major cities and in his case there really isn't anything he can do about it especially now considering i-75 has been there for 50-60 years
@@Paonporteur They likely used eminent domain which is a policy in the US which allows the federal government to take land from private property owners and compensate them with whatever price the government deems fair which could pennies on the dollar of whatever the real value of the property is. Personally I think that eminent domain is a necessary evil but that it has largely been used inappropriately in the US to allow suburban sprawl as opposed to investing in and developing already existing urban areas while (Maybe) unwittingly promoting car dependency
Dear VOX. This story needs to be longer. It effectively places some blame on GM, and other political influences, but what needs to be talked about is how the highway removal has helped the areas where it has happened. The reasons that highways were built in the first place are pretty compelling in their time. It seems like a good idea. What this story needs more of is exactly HOW it was bad given the new information we have, and how things improved once the newer notion of neighbourhoods and "Walkable" developments started to come to the fore. This is a skeleton of what could be a very compelling show.
@@laurent1144 That 2 million was never really sustainable. Unlike Sun Belt cities, Detroit could not easily annex all the farmland around it. Detroit's last annexation was in 1926. Detroit developed so quickly that it became full of young families with several children (The Pill was not an option until the latter half of the twentieth century but infant mortality had been greatly reduced before 1920) Not everyone wants to live with Mom and Dad forever and even Mom and Dad may want peace and quiet when the kids were grown. When the city was essentially completed (circa 1954), the kids moved to the suburbs to establish families of their own. Even if every last house in Detroit itself were completely intact and occupied, the population was destined to fall to 1.3M or less by about 1980.
No, it is because of it. Look at Detroit on a picture before. Well yes downfall of Detroit is not a road problem, but they could keep the downtown like it was
I live in LA and I take the 405 hwy, a hwy created by Satan himself, added like 2 more lanes to a already 6 or 7 lane hwy and it didn't really have much effect. Fun fact the average citizen in LA spends over 85 hrs stuck in traffic
I always considered it strange that highways in the USA go through the center of the city. In Mexico, highways are built with the objective of avoiding the center of cities. And I always wondered where they got the space to build them. Now I know the sad truth.
@@morganghetti I mean it’s pretty obvious- bring the highways to the borders of the city and then connect them to intercity roads. Leaves the highway outside the city.
As much as my mom complains about Robert Moses while driving though NYC, i was fully expecting him to get a mention here :-) i have to listen to a version of this video every single time she drives around the city...
anyone mentioning how race was not a factor when it came to doing this, apparently a lot of Robert Moses motives was to do exactly what the video outlined. The parkways were built just to prevent public transporation from going on them, as they all have low overpasses which buses can't go under, to prevent the poor from heading out to the suburbs. In each of the boroughs of nyc theres at least one throughway or highway which leads directly to the wealthier neighborhoods in long island (which is why my mom's constantly complaining about him since she works in LI)
An invention has nothing to do with his Jewishness. WTF? Look at how many racist white people in the US like the Blues, Jazz and rock and roll. Plus the Weimar Republic started the autobahn system, NOT Hitler. Also, there were freeways built in the US for service to the big auto factories in Detroit, the ideas of which were independent of anything going on in Germany.
Craig F. Thompson I knew about Ford, didn’t know about GM. But they all were responsible for buying up the reliable electric streetcar systems and creating the market for busses. Thanks for the recommendation.
Funny (not so much for US citizens) how Eisenhower and company misread the German transport system. Germany has the most dense railway network in the world, and its highways/autobahns don’t cross the middle of the cities. German cities also have excellent public transport.
Well, major urban expansion happened during and after the 50s so most cities were built *around* the highways (causing communities not to be destroyed), and knowing the connectivity it caused for the south and west it was a overall W
THAT is a big reason why we have to rely on automobiles today and not on mass transit. The auto, tire, gasoline, and road builders formed a cabal to lobby our legislators to force Americans to use automobiles instead of mass transit and trains for transportation. It was an early example of the lobbying that is now out of control and has destroyed our govt. and country.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the Cross Bronx Expressway cutting through the Bronx. Perfect example of a highway completely destroying several neighborhoods.
We have some railways connecting cities on the East Coast and to a lesser extent the West Coast, but going between the coasts is a massively long journey with mountains and deserts that would be simply uneconomical for building railways. Plus, trains don't give the car companies the bug buck$ they so desperately need.
Railways are the most logical way to solve this problem, and it's the most efficient form of land transportation ever developed, short of walking. But the US is not a country that thinks logically, and they hate train travel. Their solution is to build more cars and roads...sad and disgusting...
+prosthesis_ Did you see their last video on the wage gap? It's a joke on that video. I actually really like Vox's documentaries on different subjects, but they miss the mark on politics. It's okay to cover political issues, but they never have to opposing views.
+Chris M They definitely could have included more differing opinions and examples, but I think a significant portion (probably less than half) of the hate for that video was a gut reaction from conservative internet kids having their ideological safe space being violated. I think complaints and questions should be more aimed towards Liz Planck (or whoever did that video) than Vox who put it up.
+prosthesis_ The reason that video got so much hate is because it is wrong through and through. I think you're right that some conservatives might have automatically disliked that video, but in my opinion this time it was well deserved. Vox as a publisher is always responsible for their content and control of whats being released.
Good thing there's like only 3 highways left in San Francisco. The rest have been taken down many years ago. Made it so much more nicer and expensive to live in :)
This has wrong information. It claims Futurama has superhighway cutting through cities, when it actually doesn't. The images show are from the shell oil city of tomorrow, NOT futurama. Lazy research.
I first hear about National Highway Users Conference and the building of Americas roads when I recently watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit, believe it or not. Very interesting history about the building of modern America, the removal of streetcars and hidden agendas and what not. Great vid, to the point and all.
This is what happened to my city. The highways destroyed neighborhoods and then my downtown was destroyed by the highways and by extensive white flight. The city was separated into districts by the highways putting all the poor into the once prosperous south side. My city became famous for crime and poverty. The city was commuted to through the suburbs, but then the downtown began to revitalize. An influential political figure had a mueseum built in industrial swamp and created a park. Then the shops came and the area north of the interstate became prosperous once again. Then people began buying property in the south side, making it more economically diverse. With this new money flowing in from the renovations of historic mansions long in decay our southern Main Street was renovated by private owners (many wealthy actors from our home state). Then a new district was made. My hope is that the south side (where I live) is gentrified a bit more as the farther south in the city you go the poverty rates are still epidemic which likely effects the high crime rates there. And then hopefully the city continues to develop and continues to have affordable housing downtown so that if people get pushed out due to gentrification then they can still live within the city.
3:00 The truth about Paradise Valley and Black Bottom in Detroit: These neighborhoods were segregated neighborhoods where African-Americans had to pay white slumlords excessive rents for old wooden shacks because the African-Americans were not free to buy or rent elsewhere in the city. I say this as a Detroiter.
The USSR built highways as a matter of State security. In 1991 we knew the routes the Interior Ministry would use to advance on Vilnius so in the end the plan worked against them. It enabled us to delay and block reinforcements as well as force the KGB to look for alternative routes. They ended up arriving at night when they had already cut street light power. They felt as much panic as us even though they were meant to be the ones spreading fear. Instead of scattering civilians in day light they had a prolonged violent engagement through the whole of every night. I'm quite sure the US authorities considered breaking up tight black neighbourhoods with narrow streets in the same way Soviets did with us. They would rather have us all scattered to widespread blocks on the edge of the cities. Big open spaces with clear fire zones that you could drive tanks and armoured troop carriers through. Not narrow medieval streets of old cities filled with barricades. We though moved into the centres on these wide streets and took position around important buildings They just ended up with too much area to cover and could not block us coming and going. We outnumbered them 100s to 1 preventing the intimidation they hope to generate.
Just throwing this out there: the interstate highways are formally known as the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. With an inflation-adjusted construction cost estimated to be just over $500bn, the 48,000 mile highway system cost less to build in the 60 years since its inception, than one year of defense spending, and around 1/3 of the projected cost of the Joint Strike Fighter program alone.
The US military offered to pay for a number of two lane each direction highways here in Australia during the war so our military and the US military could travel around quicker in case of an invasion . Australian government basically said "thanks but no thanks, we will never need them". Now these highways are one lane each direction and jam packed with vehicles daily. The government has spent the past 20+ years widening these roads to make two lanes each way. If only Australia had the foresight that the US had back then. They could have got proper highways built quickly and at a reduced cost compared to footing the bill themselves today.
i know they address that highways were pushed by auto makers but I'm surprised they didnt even mention how extremely inefficient highways are for moving large quantities of goods & people around urban areas versus rail and trolleys.
The more I learn about our history the less optimistic I feel about the future. I guess this is why grade school history books are so heavily censored: the real story is too depressing.
I now understand why several people have protested against freeways, and it makes sense why so many cities are now performing freeway removals. Eisenhower never planned for these new Interstate highways to run right through cities (based on information I acquired), but there were some people who thought it would be a good idea to run freeways right through cities, rather than just bypassing them. That wasn't a good idea, and seeing this video has shown me why. Why, then, didn't they discuss it with urban planners so that these highways could serve their original purpose?
I study Urban Planning at my college, and in most of my classes it's said that the planners of those times were mainly in agreement with this expansion, as they either didn't know any better or didn't care, i guess high off that "American Dream" expansionist mindset. Some planners did care, but most of the outcry of highways came from the individuals directly effected, as many planners never took community into consideration when planning things back then, they were mostly in agreement with "urban renewal" programs, demolishing "blight" areas and promising a rebuild. This broke apart communities that never restructured, as once you demolish a community it will never return, leading to the downfall of cities or parts of cities. (A problem thats still complicated today.) Like, there was a proposed "highway of the future" that was going to go straight through Brooklyn and Manhattan, but many people of the 50's protested this idea, and thankfully it was never , ever implemented.
I had to downvote because the video implied that highways were a tool of racism, something they absolutely were not. There were plenty of other tools (redlining, block busting, the fact that many suburbs were only open to whites at first), but the highways themselves were just roads. That's all they are. Big, wide roads with a high capacity for traffic.
1:50 Respectfully, I agree. There’s always been a value on preserving neighborhoods by the people who live there. The question isn’t when did that value come into existence, but by whom was that value held? From colonial invasion to the eradication of neighborhoods of marginalized communities (Vox has a great video on Seneca Village in NYC) from redlining to modern-day gentrification, this isn’t a mystery. White, wealthy people in power either didn’t care about POC and/or actively wanted to destroy their neighborhoods to maintain their control socially and geographically, and the ramifications are still felt today. This is a great video, and these topics, as well as the topic of this video, could all be PhD dissertations! I just felt that comment made by the person in the video needed to be addressed
Cars slowed down transportation in general. Instead of using high speed rail systems that don’t encounter traffic we are forced to use cars and deal with dangerous drivers and lots of traffic. Cars are some of the slowest modes of transportation and alternatives should be considered.
Where I live, they made Interstate 5 go right through the minority neighborhoods. They forced people to sell their house for $50 dollars a house to build I5.
![Why American Cities Are Removing Their Highways [Documentary]](/img/n.gif)
in Europe, 95% of the time motorways go around the city (bypass/ring)
Even then people would still need highway connecting the inside of the city. I believe congestion is the real problem.
airshow502 Most major cities in Europe and smaller ones for that matter has extensive public transit system in place. If you live in a larger City in Europe you really don't need a car. In the US you can't really do without a car except New York City.
Because your infrastructure was designed by actual city planners while ours was designed by the oil and car companies
@@sourlemon83 European cities were even less designed than North American ones though (bar some exceptions like the Eixample grid of Barcelona), it's just that you can't cut through them because you hit thousand years-old monuments. Aside from some New England towns, you plow through a North American city and you won't demolish anything that's over 150 years old, nothing that has historical value and can't be rebuilt further.
@@airshow502 You don't need a highway to go into the city.
When you don't play cities skyline
What are the chances that i read this comment while loading my city in Cities skylines
What's that? Sounds interesting lol
@@piiweepiggy9775 it's a city building game on steam, I love that game
@@javaboii8118 Yeah I wish my computer would let me do that
haha was looking for a skylines comment,after a few seconds I got the urge to play it again :)
This is why urban planning needs to take the people in mind, not the cars.
Seamus McKeon Or at least not JUST the cars
They don’t care about the people... they never did, and never will... the entire system is about protecting the wealth of the elite... creating economy and other socially engineered games(travel, consumerism, spirituality, etc) to keep us(the middle and lower class slaves) busy enough to not revolt and riot and barge into the elites mansions and steel their ‘wealth’ and also make the system satisfying enough to motivate the individual to participate and also fight for the system...
@@camerontaylor7471 EXACTLY✅💯
@@camerontaylor7471 The examples used in the video show that the freeways that were removed were out of place because the city grew and changed since they were constructed.
@@excellingdeicide2967 Did you misspell decide? ...or are you referencing the 80's death metal band "Deicide"?
*The home my grandfather grew up in was plowed to the ground and paved over highway 5 in CA. I never understood why, until now.*
Sorry to hear about that. I'm sure it was a tough to relocate. But I'm sure he was well compensated for. I5 is traveled by millions of people. What area did he live?
*quit begging for attention*
It's all greed
no Cassandra according to VOX only black people were affected
@@johncohle8331 they said they were mostly poor neighbourhoods. Probably a lot of them were black, but not all of them.
That's what happens when you let car companies decide the layout of your city
Capitalism works👍
@@Yablou You mean lobbying works👍
And in general, this is what happens when people worship money and profit, prioritizing them over things like human life, or quality design.
@@johnwalker1058 In order to have profit, you must serve your customers. No customers, no profit.
that's how a government owned by corporations not the people works:
1. the companies lobbies for something that people did not ask for. the most profitable are wars but here it's roads.
2. then the people pay for it with their hard earned taxes.
3. then the company keeps the profit even though we are the once that payed for it.
4. repeat
In Australia, if they have to go through the city, they go underground.
so they go... down unda?
In the 4th dimension, they go through
The designers had no pride in workmanship.
It’s so expensive tho
thats what they did in Boston
I lived in Miami for a few years (I'm from Santiago, Chile), and coming back to Santiago-which isn't a role model for pedestrian friendly cities by any stretch-was so liberating. I could actually interact with so many other people, and as a teenager, it gave me the freedom to go around and get to know my own city. Car centric cities are just so depressing.
depressing for gov and people who dont wanna work
In Ireland, highways (or motorways as we call them) go around cities. It might take a little longer to get into the city or town, but it helps traffic in the town out providing a route around. And also it preserves the cities.
this makes a border around cities. the difference income and the amount of development in and outside of these ring is alot
Development is avoided outside them if possible to stop urban sprawl.
The highways I was talking about are through roads, which pass the city to one side, and you have to leave them to get into the city.
America in 1950s is like that rich kid who developed a drug habit. So much economic power, yet so reckless.
lol, still better than all of the world, its that kid now, with all the liberal policies and these government controlled public transportation taking away people's freedom
@@SJRS700 yea car infestation and dependency taking away's people freedom to live happy lives
@nishiljaiswal2216 don't be mad just because Americans actually has a real drug problem, and there are studies that lass cars actually improve quality of life
They should have been introduced to the marvellous idea of 'ringroads'.
+Meep Meep What are ringroads? Is that your term for traffic circles?
i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02039/M25_2039855c.jpg
A road that goes around a town or a city, like this.
It looks like you call them beltways?
+Meep Meep Yes, that is correct. Some cities have them in one form or another.
More like they should have been introduced to the marvelous idea of 'public transport'
And today they're all crowded and always under construction
Ken Rose boohoo! Everything is bad ;( stop complaining.
If you think that, you've obviously never tried to drive in the 50's before any freeways at all existed. You could barely leave your own town without it taking hours.
@@gjpryor832 The sun is too hot.
Amen
hahaha literally
Seems most of USA’s structural problems arise from lobbying
Or corruption lets call it what it really is
@@eddiedean9886 yup
Fun fact, when automobiles first appeared on roads of course they had to share them with pedestrians, horse and carts etc. , after a spate of car's running over pedestrians the car industry ran a campaign to vilify pedestrians for been reckless on the roads they had used to walk on for thousands of years, guess who won.
Chuck Noris?
+CowTipper989 Not until the campaign. Until that point the roads were for everyone.
Adam ruins everything
+CowTipper989
_"That's what sidewalks are for"_
Yeah, wish every road automatically came with one.
+Shane Le Plastrier Taxi cabs are another corrupt facet of the industry. They shut down cheaper hand carts the chinese used. And now Uber is starting to burn the Taxi industry.
The moral is-in Cities Skylines, build your roads and highways FIRST and then zone the place!
what he said
Which is super easy to say but hard to do in the real world, or in a game without unlimited $. What you CAN do, is leave room for those in the future though! :-)
[in the real world it's because cities develop organically over time, so it's hard to predict how it will evolve and change. the opposite is China's 'ghost cities' where they did exactly what you said ;-) ]
Hahahaha true
@@e7venjedi Most efficient way to control transportation is to not control it and let companies buy the rights to highways, roads, and public transit from the government and remove any kind of certifications or city approval for adding onto highways, roads, or transit.
Though this'll never happen cuz politicians have no incentive to do whats most optimal for the economy
**instructions not clear doesn't put any stoplights oopsies**
Car travel is incredibly inefficient in dense areas. You can never build enough highways to completely eliminate congestion above a certain density. The problem was that the auto industry wanted to convert previously established cities where travel was based around walking and streetcars into cities where travel was entirely based around car travel, and largely they succeeded. The only US city with a car ownership rate below 50 percent is NYC. NYC was almost entirely designed and built around its extensive subway system, and there was no way to try and reverse it because of how ingrained it was in how the city functioned.
The auto industry promoted suburbanization initially, because they knew it was going to raise the car ownership rate, putting more money into their pockets. They endlessly lobbied the government to support development in that way and tried to portray it as "the best way to live" and a symbol of status. They succeeded in getting most people to think that way, and it sort of just perpetuated to today. Try and find any scientific evidence that raising children in a closed off McMansion where they rarely are out in public and see the outside world is better than being in a city.
Collin Parsons I personally hold that it’s better to raise a kid out in the country where they and the neighbor’s kid half a mile away can go out and play in the woods and be kids
This
I agree. I’ve lived in NYC since 1989 when I moved here to go to college. Not having to own a car all these years is a no brainer. To me having a car requires so much time and energy. Not to mention the costs. A garage next to my building charges 600 dollars a month.
NYC was able to defeat these highways because citizens elect people who represent their best interests. I can imagine in many other cities powerful right wing politicians only had corporations to represent. They had their brothers get the contracts to build the roads, or the houses they over into. There was zero political interest in city dwellers. Maintaining a cities Street grid or preventing half a city from being turned into a parking lot wasn’t a problem for these right wingers. Getting whites out of cities was another way of consolidating power. The could then gerrymander the city to keep state government in the corporations pocket.
Get over your conspiracy theories
nickys34 Suburbs are about white flight. This is where all new investment is by the productive taxpayers who move there. At least Europe puts their housing projects and slums in the suburbs and keep their large urban cities beautiful. America doesn’t have the political will to do this.
Quite possibly the most disruptive and damaging decision ever made to the quality of human life by the US government since the genocide of the Native Americans. you don't realize how horrendous and miserable American city life is until you visit Europe. North America is truly awful.
thats why i dont dezone in simcity 4 lol
Lol
hhahaha
This guy... This guy gets it.
This was exactly my thought the moment I saw the video hahahahah
+Mohit Deshpande LOL!!!
Germany had good highways but they also have modern high speed rail and their cities are not contested in traffic
And many cities have a lot of extra bike lanes. In Münster for instance (Muenster, not Munster :D), there are even extra bike lanes on round abouts. They even have a bike "car" park.
@@tinkerduck1373 i would sure like that in America :0
We were stuck in traffic in Munich once
@@duncanmcauley7932 yeah Munich has really bad traffic
We have also a few „fails“ like in US. For example A7 through hamburg. But its gone be fixed in the next few years. With 3 new Tunnels. 2 of them allready finished: construction of 3rd one starts now.
They also used the argument that it made it easier for military to move around the nation easily and quickly
@Channel Oh I'm not disagreeing with the idea. It's solid, and makes perfect sense. In fact, I was brought up to believe that it was the primary reason for building our highway system. The other, support and pushes from the auto industry is new info to me.
I’m sure the military was top priority. I’ve thought about this when riding my bike on the riverside bike path in Sacramento. I’d be willing to bet the real reason for the bike path was never to benefit the citizens but as strategic paths for government use in case of emergency
They were called defense loops. Military, displace minorities, ,auto industry help the government sponsored white flight...... all valid
Eisenhower felt the need to establish it after witnessing the efficiency of the Autobahn in Germany during WW2. So blame them for it, not us. I like cars too, if you have ever been to Europe you understand how less convenient traveling is due to lack of road infrastructure.
Yet, the U.S.A never became a place where the enemy invaded.
In normal countries, we have bypass highways that go around cities to keep congestion low. Highways are for going from city to city and when your destination isn't the city, you go around it. For travel in city, you have buses, metros and cars.
his makes a border around cities. the difference income and the amount of development in and outside of these ring is alot
@@ryanb5684 That still seems better than having huge giant roads going through the centre of the city full of traffic all the time.
Interstates are a good concept, but I hate how they cut through the middle of towns. Luckily the interstate highway goes around the downtown area of my hometown in Missoula, MT.
+Justin Davis precisely that is the primary problem. You see it in places like detroit or LA where the highway acts as a physical wall or river dividing poor and rich.
+Steve W lol most likely the poor don't want to be near you either. It is good to have integrated neighbourhoods so that you don't see people cut off form jobs and what not
If the highway is built correctly, it doesn't have to slice a town in half. The area I am from has a large bumper to bumper interstate slicing it in two, yet most of the highway is elevated to allow city traffic to continue flowing as normal.
Precisely, we have learned a lot from an urban planning perspective in terms of how to build and properly plan infrastructure. We will also continue to learn moving forward.
Have you ever been forced to live along side one of these elevated highways??? The noise and pollution are unbelievable. Asthma problems are increased. Have you ever seen the junk that fall over the edge of these raised highways. People walking underneath have been injured as well as their homes and businesses!
Great motion picture! Can you guys do one about how the auto industry also destroyed public transportation in cities like LA?
+CptnJCFG YES
+CptnJCFG No they cant. Nice try tho.
+CptnJCFG - Beverly Hills Unified School District will try to stop the making of any video about public transport in LA.
+CptnJCFG Fun fact! You know that subplot in Who Framed Roger Rabbit about how they were going to get rid of the streetcars and build a highway through ToonTown to replace them? Yeah, that actually happened. The same companies who lobbied for interstate highways also lobbied city governments to get rid of public transportation so that more people would have to buy cars to get to work. Pretty shitty, right?
+poprox101. Yes! GM bought out many public transportation outlets in the 30's.
The highway that they removed in Boston was replaced with one underground, so you can't see it. Its a big tunnel that leads to the zakim bridge.
Is that the big dig which was built a decade ago?
Amanda Kwong yes it is
To think they nearly did this to my home city of London is terrifying to me
Highways are awesome, they’re super convenient compared to Europe especially in the winter or hot summer. The US has a much less temperate climate, people like to be inside a climate controlled car not freezing biking or overheating on a city bus. I hated visiting Copenhagen. Bikes are much more effort and take longer than using a car. And driving is a lot of fun too
@@north-shoregcs3894 they have high speed rail and metros. You don’t need to walk that far to reach any of those things and busses aren’t that bad.
@@north-shoregcs3894 60% of Copenhageners would disagree with you. They use a bike because it’s the fastest way to travel inside the city
@@north-shoregcs3894 Here is an idea. Wear a jacket.
@@finismalorum9746 😂 u wish
This is basically the story of the South Bronx. The Cross Bronx Expressway could have followed a different course that took it through more industrial sections but it basically went right through integrated historic neighborhoods because nobody gave a crap about the residents there....And yeah, many of them were non-white. The moniker of "Urban Renewal" has always had a tinge of either "Minority Removal" or "Integrated Neighborhood Removal" to it. James Baldwin gave a really good talk on this and it was heartbreaking.
+phuturephunk Yep. And it isn't just highways -- 100 years earlier, railroads did this exact same thing. Except instead of ripping up homes and destroying neighborhoods, it separated cities into "poor" areas on the outskirts, and "well off" areas in the urban core -- hence the idioms "across the tracks," "over the tracks" or "wrong side of the tracks" in referring to the "bad" part of town.
+phuturephunk Be careful, your well thought out and informed comment won't sit well with the retards in these comments because 'muh white genoside'
+Czarface there's a difference between genocide and institutionalized racism. Don't use one to discount the fact that the other exists.
+Andrew Saturn should've built quite a few of these urban/downtown interstates several decades ago either underground (either boring tunnels or cut-then-covering with some parkland/gardens/SOMETHING on top (Boston Big Dig/Downtown Montreal style)) or DIRECTLY next to railroad tracks to minimize the demolition of urban cores IMO (considering the complete decline in railroad usage the decades immediately following WWII)
We can thank Robert Moses for that, who was probably one of the most "visionary," destructive and racist urban planners of the 20th century.
We never did this in Australia. All of our inner city suburbs are mostly perfectly preserved and haven't changed much (in layout) in almost 100 years. The first highways were built here in the late 60s (though most construction occurred from the 1970s onwards), but they were non-intrusive and were later built outwards from the centre, not through the middle.
even Perth, WA? there are some highways running through the city
Always good to hear about how things are in other countries
But they never ran over abos. lol
Libertarian - MGTOW - White Nationalist Australia is an island, they have to be very careful who they take in. White ppl where never intended to live in Australia, it belongs to aboriginals, just like NZ.
My city of half a million didn't put highways thru the core either (Raleigh, NC).
Poor Atlanta…
Oliver Queen Poor USA
Jaken vloggar poor world
Conductor 101 Poor universe
I am moving there and starting a business called Trition Pictures
Atlanta was a tiny city before the highways. The communities around it were single stoplights or four way stops with dirt roads. If they remained tiny and quaint then little brill streetcars could have serviced them, HOWEVER
YOU probably wouldn't be living there. If you lived in Roswell and took a train, it would take you hours to make the trip to the capital any time you tried it. Today you can make it in under an hour if you pick a non rush hour.
All times and travels had their pros and cons. Often we see things in rose colored glasses. If we however stick 4,000,000 people on the pre freeway Atlanta Metro cityscape, it would be hell on Earth. It would look like Soylent Green.
Japan has highways right in the cities, but these highways are on the "second floor", while ground level is nice pedestrian infrastucture (or normal at least)
Thats how it is here in Toronto too
In the US there's plenty of those. But the dark is not inviting...
Still, the noise and air pollution around these highways is high which makes it sometimes unbearable to live in such areas. В общем, жопа полная. Если машины едут быстрее 50 км/ч, то находиться в пределах 50м невыносимо
They do especially in Tokyo, but not much on other cities. And they pretty much stop making more these days, they instead invested heavily more to mass transport. Railways are king in Japan and on major cities, they basically the one criss-crossing the cities on all levels (above, street-level and underground).
Well at least they somehow manayge to make the pedestrian level under those highways still nice, but the thriving areas are still the open space areas where pedestrians are the priority and they often are always close to a railway station. Japan don't really rely on cars for transport except on country-side where there is less people living anyways, and yet some of them still have railways for commuting to the nearest city and they are efficient that you can rely on.
Great video. In Koblenz (Germany) we have the same problem. A major highway cuts through the city and you have traffic jams almost every day. I think a lot of the traffic could be removed by improving and subsidizing public transport.
Self driving cars that form linked 'trains' with other cars and coordinate so they never have to stop at traffic lights will be the solution to increase road capacity. The reality is that dense cities with multistorey offices and apartments need subways and underground roads. Its absurd to blame cars for the problems 10+ story apartments and offices create. Railways are utterly hideous in that they also cut communities in half. It all needs to go underground. The other solution is to stop flooding Germany and its cities with fakeugees from the middle east and Africa.
Just build a motorway ring or an express road ring around and ban transit traffic on that highway (so only traffic that will exit it will use it).
@@WilliamJones-Halibut-vq1fs There's so much wrong with this comment I don't even know where to begin. Pushing aside the disgusting nationalist "fakeugees" talking point, 10+ story apartments and other ways to increase the density and mixed-use of our cities contribute A LOT to making them better. Dense neighbourhoods mean people don't have to commute as far, mixed use means every essential need is at their doorstop, which profoundly reduces the need for cars in the first place. Sprawling, incredibly sparse suburban areas are the worst kind of places because they create a dependency on cars to get anywhere, and decrease the livelihood of a city as well.
Cars are not the solution for urban planning of the future, and people have realized that. Get with the program. Self driving cars will make driving safer, but more driving is not necessary as it will only pollute our cities, and make them less walkable, livable and frendly.
Railways are utterly hideous? But the huge as highways, built stacks upon stacks upon stacks on each other, are not? I understand you want to move everything underground but that is not economical for every area in a city, as it depends on local funding and even on factors outside of a city's control like the type of soil they have. Railways take way less space then highways by a very large amount. Just look at Tokyo and other Japanese cities.
It's interesting for me. Seattle build a huge freeway through their city and Vancouver Canada decided not to and built one on the outside of the city. Now Vancouver has a great transportation system to Downtown and room for the city to grow without being cut up by a freeway.
+BrothaJeff I was just thinking that. Vancouver is my home and its fascinating to look at the concrete monsters in American cities. Its so unfamiliar to me.
+BrothaJeff Aren't they burying the Alaskan Way? I hope they do. The amount of forward thinking put into that must have been limited because it totally cuts Seattle off from the Sound waterfront.
Midironica I'm not too sure. But yeah it's a shame that the waterfront is ruined because of that freeway.
Time to reroute I-5 out of Seattle. The construction of the I-5 freeway was the single worst thing to have ever happened to the west coast
Im surprised there was no mention of the “Highway to Nowhere”/ I-170 in Baltimore.
It was supposed to connect two highways together I believe. They leveled an entire community for like 2 miles of unused highway, and the surrounding “surface” streets make it even more useless.
US40 Franklin expy?
imagine having highways running through your own city, love from vancouver
Downtown Vancouver is on a peninsula, but the rest is sprawled on a blob of land, which is the metro, separated by 70 km/h roads that like to larp as highways. Downtown van saving grace was that little piece of geography they have.
@M R i- it snows like twice a year here, what are you on about 💀🤚
@@stanley1431 global warmimg
Similar story in Birmingham, UK. We had a massive carriageway that carried traffic into the City Centre core in the 70s. After 20 years we discovered it destroyed most of the original culture, shopping and increased crime. We got rid of it in the early 2000's and now are regenerating areas with squares, public transport and more pedestrian areas. The city is better off without traffic inside the city.
Vids like this only convince me that Vox is one of the best franchises available on youtube. Thanks. Excellent piece. Kudos to the presenters and writers.
"More and more white people" yes what a great, non-biased, non-liberal, TH-cam channel.
+geinikan1kan No, they really aren't. The turned this piece into yet another "evil America" story when that simply wasn't the case. They left out so much vital information and immediately made this about money and race.
Joe Blow Even though I know that digital culture is basically an illusion built with cheap electricity underpinning an ideological stance that makes connectivity a necessity, I still use the internet. 'S baby with the bathwater baby. Baby with the bathwater.
Joe Blow Yeah, ditto in FL. Data and electricity are basically measured in similar ways, they are both utilities after all.
geinikan1kan
Critical discussion is a great thing. Race bating is something else entirely. This video jumps almost immediately into "look at how bad this was". If you want a real discussion, go look up the "Dividing Highways" documentary from PBS from 1997. Its on TH-cam and easy to find. That publication did an excellent job providing insight into both the historical background, the benefits and the damage caused by superhighways.
I am a geographer, and my entire master's thesis focused on this exact topic - the impact of freeways on urban neighborhoods. The impact has included social, environmental, and economic. My case study was the Bruce Watkins Parkway in KC MO - protests caused the highway to now include stretches where one has to stop for stop lights.
The West End, a historically black neighborhood in my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, was almost entirely destroyed by forcing black people from their homes and businesses, and then demolishing most of the westernmost part of the neighborhood to build I75. My family lost their house that they had owned for 50 years at the time, and I75 runs right over top of where their home once stood. Our generational wealth was stolen from us, pried from our fingers.
@@Paonporteur Thats the reality of a lot of interstate highways going straight through major cities and in his case there really isn't anything he can do about it especially now considering i-75 has been there for 50-60 years
@@Paonporteur They likely used eminent domain which is a policy in the US which allows the federal government to take land from private property owners and compensate them with whatever price the government deems fair which could pennies on the dollar of whatever the real value of the property is. Personally I think that eminent domain is a necessary evil but that it has largely been used inappropriately in the US to allow suburban sprawl as opposed to investing in and developing already existing urban areas while (Maybe) unwittingly promoting car dependency
Where were they supposed to build the highway in your city ?
Through someone else's neighborhood ?
Are people in the comments really suggesting racism wasn't a thing in the 40s/50s? LMAO
No, they're merely suggesting that the building of highways was not racist.
they had to go somewhere, so they moved into white neighborhoods, and went to white schools. so it did them a favor
n. I bet you they're all white!
doofus mcwoofus but it is what separates the whites from the minority’s. It was kinda like a boundary of separation, a “wall” so to speak
Lmao whites chose to destroy African American neighborhoods building highways straight through them. Of course there was racism involved
This is one of the best videos on the history of urban renewal and highways that I have ever seen; thank you endlessly, Vox
damn, I'm a transportation engineer, I feel bad, it's true true, but it's all about the money smh
+marc07112 Gasoline is needed to keep the US afloat because of Capitalism.
You know nothing about capitalism if you think it is only money that keeps it afloat.
Would you go so far as to say... It's all about the Benjamins, baby?
That's why European Cities are more convenient and generally much better. American cities should learn how Barcelona or Paris was planned.
Dear VOX. This story needs to be longer. It effectively places some blame on GM, and other political influences, but what needs to be talked about is how the highway removal has helped the areas where it has happened.
The reasons that highways were built in the first place are pretty compelling in their time. It seems like a good idea. What this story needs more of is exactly HOW it was bad given the new information we have, and how things improved once the newer notion of neighbourhoods and "Walkable" developments started to come to the fore.
This is a skeleton of what could be a very compelling show.
Detroit is your example for it??!! LOLOL
EVERYWHERE in Detroit is essentially an empy grass plot...
Look at it before the freeways. It was a city of 2 million. Honestly, it's like you don't know how to Google!
But I hear Motown is coming back strong.
Boeing and General Motors. The result of the new diverse America.
@@laurent1144
That 2 million was never really sustainable. Unlike Sun Belt cities, Detroit could not easily annex all the farmland around it.
Detroit's last annexation was in 1926.
Detroit developed so quickly that it became full of young families with several children (The Pill was not an option until the latter half of the twentieth century but infant mortality had been greatly reduced before 1920)
Not everyone wants to live with Mom and Dad forever and even Mom and Dad may want peace and quiet when the kids were grown.
When the city was essentially completed (circa 1954), the kids moved to the suburbs to establish families of their own.
Even if every last house in Detroit itself were completely intact and occupied, the population was destined to fall to 1.3M or less by about 1980.
@@WilliamJones-Halibut-vq1fs
The latter has gone bankrupt and the former has serious issues of its own now (737 MAX).
3:00 they used Detroit as an example? I'm pretty sure detroit has large grass plots for other reasons than road construction
Not with those two neighborhoods. They put the highways in before the decline of the city.
No, it is because of it. Look at Detroit on a picture before. Well yes downfall of Detroit is not a road problem, but they could keep the downtown like it was
here in India our highways go around the city and most big cities have some sort of ring road
Fun fact the more lanes you build on a highway the worse traffic gets.
Aren't more lanes typically built where there's more congestion and heavy use in the first place?
I dont think there's any true correlation.
Yes, but the increase in lanes leads to an increase in people using it, resulting in more congestion. Plus the lane switching thing.
I live in LA and I take the 405 hwy, a hwy created by Satan himself, added like 2 more lanes to a already 6 or 7 lane hwy and it didn't really have much effect. Fun fact the average citizen in LA spends over 85 hrs stuck in traffic
+Brian Salas yearly
Driving is great in Germany, though. Highways are outside of the cities.
As well they should be.
I always considered it strange that highways in the USA go through the center of the city. In Mexico, highways are built with the objective of avoiding the center of cities. And I always wondered where they got the space to build them. Now I know the sad truth.
+Bill Jenkins it's not that bad reasoning to be fair
My city, Glasgow, was largely destroyed by the m8 motorway, luckily we learnt our lesson and stopped it happening to Edinburgh.
My opinion will not change
Train > Highway
You forgot to mention at the end that Eisenhower didn't want or expect the highways to go through cities, just connect them
How does that work?
@@morganghetti I mean it’s pretty obvious- bring the highways to the borders of the city and then connect them to intercity roads. Leaves the highway outside the city.
“We’re calling it, a Freeway.”
Why is the bg music like I'm watching murder-mystery?
My mom told me and showed me pictures of how pretty the city use to be before the "urban renewal" took place.
Its to bad : /
There were cherry trees in downtown Newark, NJ People actually enjoyed walking around--imagine that!
where did/ do you live?
Hi, i enjoyed the video but music is too loud
+TSkeptic Turn down volume, or turn on subtitles
Agree. The music was unnecessary and too loud.
Vox is always turning nothing into something with their one sided views.
More cars = more congestion
No. More people more congestion
@@bryans.1710 more people=more cars=more congestion
As much as my mom complains about Robert Moses while driving though NYC, i was fully expecting him to get a mention here :-) i have to listen to a version of this video every single time she drives around the city...
anyone mentioning how race was not a factor when it came to doing this, apparently a lot of Robert Moses motives was to do exactly what the video outlined. The parkways were built just to prevent public transporation from going on them, as they all have low overpasses which buses can't go under, to prevent the poor from heading out to the suburbs. In each of the boroughs of nyc theres at least one throughway or highway which leads directly to the wealthier neighborhoods in long island (which is why my mom's constantly complaining about him since she works in LI)
An invention has nothing to do with his Jewishness. WTF? Look at how many racist white people in the US like the Blues, Jazz and rock and roll.
Plus the Weimar Republic started the autobahn system, NOT Hitler. Also, there were freeways built in the US for service to the big auto factories in Detroit, the ideas of which were independent of anything going on in Germany.
Craig F. Thompson I knew about Ford, didn’t know about GM. But they all were responsible for buying up the reliable electric streetcar systems and creating the market for busses.
Thanks for the recommendation.
So I go downtown a lot, I noticed how the highways are all over the black neighborhoods, then I watched this video. Interesting.
I live in the Netherlands, and our motorways start and end at city outskirts.
Your country is also roughly the size of my farm.
@@buckodonnghaile4309 lol
I hope one day I can see a freeway right in the middle of amsterdam
@@gumballgtr1478 same for London lol
@@gumballgtr1478 you hope in vain, there were plans to build a freeway right into the center of Amsterdam, but public protests stopped them
Funny (not so much for US citizens) how Eisenhower and company misread the German transport system. Germany has the most dense railway network in the world, and its highways/autobahns don’t cross the middle of the cities. German cities also have excellent public transport.
Well, major urban expansion happened during and after the 50s so most cities were built *around* the highways (causing communities not to be destroyed), and knowing the connectivity it caused for the south and west it was a overall W
Brilliant video. Would love to see more on the subject- how about something on traffic engineering? Thanks
Please make a video about the destruction of the Pacific Electric Railway by the auto industry
THAT is a big reason why we have to rely on automobiles today and not on mass transit. The auto, tire, gasoline, and road builders formed a cabal to lobby our legislators to force Americans to use automobiles instead of mass transit and trains for transportation. It was an early example of the lobbying that is now out of control and has destroyed our govt. and country.
Tommy Truth I know man I cry every time
I'm surprised you didn't mention the Cross Bronx Expressway cutting through the Bronx. Perfect example of a highway completely destroying several neighborhoods.
Build some Railways?
We have some railways connecting cities on the East Coast and to a lesser extent the West Coast, but going between the coasts is a massively long journey with mountains and deserts that would be simply uneconomical for building railways. Plus, trains don't give the car companies the bug buck$ they so desperately need.
The US used to have more miles of track than the whole of Europe. Sadly that isn't the case anymore. Another story for another video.
@@huwfylt it still has, actually. But most of it is dedicated to freight.
@@ianhomerpura8937 yes, and it used to have a lot more. There's so many miles of old railroads beds that are turned into trails now.
Railways are the most logical way to solve this problem, and it's the most efficient form of land transportation ever developed, short of walking. But the US is not a country that thinks logically, and they hate train travel. Their solution is to build more cars and roads...sad and disgusting...
How highways are sexist and a result of patriarchy - Vox 2016
+Chris M ... so are you parodying people who hate vox or are you just setting up a strawman?
+Chris M It is an actual fact that they targeting these neighborhoods. It's not even subtext.
+prosthesis_ Did you see their last video on the wage gap? It's a joke on that video. I actually really like Vox's documentaries on different subjects, but they miss the mark on politics. It's okay to cover political issues, but they never have to opposing views.
+Chris M They definitely could have included more differing opinions and examples, but I think a significant portion (probably less than half) of the hate for that video was a gut reaction from conservative internet kids having their ideological safe space being violated. I think complaints and questions should be more aimed towards Liz Planck (or whoever did that video) than Vox who put it up.
+prosthesis_ The reason that video got so much hate is because it is wrong through and through.
I think you're right that some conservatives might have automatically disliked that video, but in my opinion this time it was well deserved.
Vox as a publisher is always responsible for their content and control of whats being released.
Good thing there's like only 3 highways left in San Francisco. The rest have been taken down many years ago. Made it so much more nicer and expensive to live in :)
+Noahdaceo that's why I love SF, greatest city on Earth
yes!
+Noahdaceo Loma Prieta was in fact a blessing in disguise. The Embarcadero is so much nicer now without an elevated highway going through it.
+Noahdaceo Which is also why LA is dreadful, the traffic is borderline unbearable
Arian hmn oh my gosh, the traffic there is horrible! So polluted too
This has wrong information. It claims Futurama has superhighway cutting through cities, when it actually doesn't. The images show are from the shell oil city of tomorrow, NOT futurama. Lazy research.
When someone asks you about systemic racism in America... perfect example.
This is about wealth and power not about race
@@ElBulPagani Nope its about race
Highways are useful. Poor people are not. Easy choice to make.
I first hear about National Highway Users Conference and the building of Americas roads when I recently watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit, believe it or not. Very interesting history about the building of modern America, the removal of streetcars and hidden agendas and what not. Great vid, to the point and all.
Reminds me of that spongebob episode
lol
VortexFX my thought exactly
they built the shelly superhighway in real life
This is what happened to my city. The highways destroyed neighborhoods and then my downtown was destroyed by the highways and by extensive white flight. The city was separated into districts by the highways putting all the poor into the once prosperous south side. My city became famous for crime and poverty. The city was commuted to through the suburbs, but then the downtown began to revitalize. An influential political figure had a mueseum built in industrial swamp and created a park. Then the shops came and the area north of the interstate became prosperous once again. Then people began buying property in the south side, making it more economically diverse. With this new money flowing in from the renovations of historic mansions long in decay our southern Main Street was renovated by private owners (many wealthy actors from our home state). Then a new district was made. My hope is that the south side (where I live) is gentrified a bit more as the farther south in the city you go the poverty rates are still epidemic which likely effects the high crime rates there. And then hopefully the city continues to develop and continues to have affordable housing downtown so that if people get pushed out due to gentrification then they can still live within the city.
In India we have Byepasses or ringroads which go around the city(they build new ones if the city grows and the road becomes a city road)
3:00
The truth about Paradise Valley and Black Bottom in Detroit:
These neighborhoods were segregated neighborhoods where African-Americans had to pay white slumlords excessive rents for old wooden shacks because the African-Americans were not free to buy or rent elsewhere in the city.
I say this as a Detroiter.
*facts* same thing happened in Chicago
What musics are they using? it's so different, make me concentrate better while watching their videos
The USSR built highways as a matter of State security. In 1991 we knew the routes the Interior Ministry would use to advance on Vilnius so in the end the plan worked against them. It enabled us to delay and block reinforcements as well as force the KGB to look for alternative routes. They ended up arriving at night when they had already cut street light power. They felt as much panic as us even though they were meant to be the ones spreading fear. Instead of scattering civilians in day light they had a prolonged violent engagement through the whole of every night.
I'm quite sure the US authorities considered breaking up tight black neighbourhoods with narrow streets in the same way Soviets did with us. They would rather have us all scattered to widespread blocks on the edge of the cities. Big open spaces with clear fire zones that you could drive tanks and armoured troop carriers through. Not narrow medieval streets of old cities filled with barricades. We though moved into the centres on these wide streets and took position around important buildings They just ended up with too much area to cover and could not block us coming and going. We outnumbered them 100s to 1 preventing the intimidation they hope to generate.
What are you talking about?
Dude, your understanding of America is not great.
Very interesting video. Makes me wonder how much of the current infrastructure in the U.S. involved wiping out existing towns and houses.
this video is still extremely relevant, even 7yrs later in 2023
Just throwing this out there: the interstate highways are formally known as the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. With an inflation-adjusted construction cost estimated to be just over $500bn, the 48,000 mile highway system cost less to build in the 60 years since its inception, than one year of defense spending, and around 1/3 of the projected cost of the Joint Strike Fighter program alone.
+SchizoFilms Maybe we should have the Mexicans pay for it. :) #feelthebern
The US military offered to pay for a number of two lane each direction highways here in Australia during the war so our military and the US military could travel around quicker in case of an invasion . Australian government basically said "thanks but no thanks, we will never need them".
Now these highways are one lane each direction and jam packed with vehicles daily.
The government has spent the past 20+ years widening these roads to make two lanes each way. If only Australia had the foresight that the US had back then. They could have got proper highways built quickly and at a reduced cost compared to footing the bill themselves today.
i know they address that highways were pushed by auto makers but I'm surprised they didnt even mention how extremely inefficient highways are for moving large quantities of goods & people around urban areas versus rail and trolleys.
The more I learn about our history the less optimistic I feel about the future. I guess this is why grade school history books are so heavily censored: the real story is too depressing.
I now understand why several people have protested against freeways, and it makes sense why so many cities are now performing freeway removals. Eisenhower never planned for these new Interstate highways to run right through cities (based on information I acquired), but there were some people who thought it would be a good idea to run freeways right through cities, rather than just bypassing them. That wasn't a good idea, and seeing this video has shown me why. Why, then, didn't they discuss it with urban planners so that these highways could serve their original purpose?
I study Urban Planning at my college, and in most of my classes it's said that the planners of those times were mainly in agreement with this expansion, as they either didn't know any better or didn't care, i guess high off that "American Dream" expansionist mindset. Some planners did care, but most of the outcry of highways came from the individuals directly effected, as many planners never took community into consideration when planning things back then, they were mostly in agreement with "urban renewal" programs, demolishing "blight" areas and promising a rebuild.
This broke apart communities that never restructured, as once you demolish a community it will never return, leading to the downfall of cities or parts of cities. (A problem thats still complicated today.) Like, there was a proposed "highway of the future" that was going to go straight through Brooklyn and Manhattan, but many people of the 50's protested this idea, and thankfully it was never , ever implemented.
2:12, That interchange is in San Diego connecting with Route 209 (No longer exists), Route 8, and route 5
Constantly blaming white people, yawn....
They are not blaming all white people just the rich white people who run most of our lives because they have so much power.
I still don't understand why Eisenhower didn't just build high speed rail
This is a very important video. Thanks.
i remember as a kid in San Diego my uncles ex in-laws had a house in the normal heights area. now its i-15 running through North/South.
Sees how bad American highways have hurt cities
*laughs in British*
Sees how close London came to following in LAs footsteps.
*Laughs more nervously*
Jay Foreman - London traffic
@I HATE TOUCANS It's a dump.
We’ll stop hurting cities when you stop eating baked beans and tomatoes with your breakfast
see how bad the British was at trying to keep our beautiful USA
laughs in iq
You forgot it was called the "interstate and defense highway act" it was a way for the US military to also move around the US quickly in emergency.
Yes, but it is called Interstate for a reason. Don't be surprised if can't handle the additional demand for inner city transit.
If you're just here for information about highways in the US, I recommend not reading the comment section...
+MadE Too late, and to be honest, there wasn't really anything interesting about the highways either.
Me, a european: A hIgHwAy ThRoUgH a CiTy?!
I could have ate that HighWay
I had to downvote because the video implied that highways were a tool of racism, something they absolutely were not. There were plenty of other tools (redlining, block busting, the fact that many suburbs were only open to whites at first), but the highways themselves were just roads. That's all they are. Big, wide roads with a high capacity for traffic.
1:50 Respectfully, I agree. There’s always been a value on preserving neighborhoods by the people who live there. The question isn’t when did that value come into existence, but by whom was that value held? From colonial invasion to the eradication of neighborhoods of marginalized communities (Vox has a great video on Seneca Village in NYC) from redlining to modern-day gentrification, this isn’t a mystery. White, wealthy people in power either didn’t care about POC and/or actively wanted to destroy their neighborhoods to maintain their control socially and geographically, and the ramifications are still felt today. This is a great video, and these topics, as well as the topic of this video, could all be PhD dissertations! I just felt that comment made by the person in the video needed to be addressed
Where were they supposed to build the highway in your city ?
Through someone else's neighborhood ?
Cars slowed down transportation in general. Instead of using high speed rail systems that don’t encounter traffic we are forced to use cars and deal with dangerous drivers and lots of traffic. Cars are some of the slowest modes of transportation and alternatives should be considered.
Vox uses one of the best video formats I don't know from where do they collect these really old videos from
1:07 And that design did exactly the opposite 😂😂
Where I live, they made Interstate 5 go right through the minority neighborhoods. They forced people to sell their house for $50 dollars a house to build I5.
In US & Canada they love their Highways...We love cars !!
Not in Montreal.