Mar 10, 2021 10:00 pm
By Lawrence Banton
Share with
In the early days of automobile travel, people naturally wanted to venture further distances as cars could now take them places previously unexplored. There were some unexpected consequences, though. While building highways and interstates signaled economic progress to much of the U.S., it also played a major role in withholding social progress for Black and Latino communities.
The early 1900s consisted of states establishing their own highway systems, which typically linked poorly maintained roads and streets into one system. New York opened the NYS Parkway in 1908, which was used to link cities to recreational areas and parks. A year later, architect Daniel Burnham submitted plans to begin building an elaborate highway system in Chicago that would connect outlying suburbs to the urban center.