"Strong Towns" which is typically dogmatic against constructing any new expressways, misrepresents building demolition impacts of late 1950s, early 1960s construction of the SW-SE Freeway:
"Smart Growth America’s analysis puts numbers behind these arguments. It estimates that the construction of ... I-395/695 in DC destroyed 99% of buildings in the city’s southwest quadrant, displacing 4,700 people and causing an average of $483,000 in lost home equity."
This claim that the freeway/expressway destroyed 99% of the buildings in the district;s sw quadrant is false, it completely neglects the time periods SW Urban Renewal District program. The expressway itself displaced a fraction of all of this.
Read about the SW Redevelopment at the blog Whose Downtown
The federal government established the Redevelopment Land Agency and the National Capital Planning Commission to design, monitor, and complete the redevelopment of Southwest D.C. under the District of Columbia Redevelopment Act of 1950. The rationale provided for the urban renewal project included concerns about congestion in the downtown area and preoccupation over unhealthy slum conditions and unsightly dilapidated buildings. The major expansion of the federal government during the New Deal and World War II created pressure to free up residential space for federal employees who worked downtown. Additionally, Title I of the National Housing Act of 1949 stipulated that major urban cities would receive funds in order to renovate blighted areas, including neighborhoods classified as slums or buildings deemed unsafe and uninhabitable. These acts gained judicial support when in 1954, the US Supreme Court ruled that a property could be condemned and taken by the federal government solely to beautify a community for the benefit the general public.[2]
The implementation of the urban renewal project displaced the large number of African Americans living in Southwest D.C. The project leveled 99 percent of buildings in the Southwestern quadrant of the city and forced the 4,500 African American Families who had previously resided in Southwest D.C. to relocate to other areas –mainly to Northeast and Southeast D.C.[3] Of the 5,900 new buildings constructed in the area, only 310 were classified as moderately-priced housing units.[4] The project tore apart the culture and history of historic African American neighborhoods. Following resettlement in other areas of the city, 25% of displaced residents reported not making a single friend in their new neighborhood.[5] While local critics deemed the urban renewal program to be the “Negro Removal Program,” the project had a wide impact on the nation as it became a model for other large cities to emulate.[6]
https://whosedowntown.wordpress.com/urban-renewal-the-story-of-southwest-d-c/
I challenge anyone to look at SW DC, whether on a map, or in person, to see the considerably larger area now occupied by post 1950s buildings.
The Strong Towns article misstating the 99 percent figure is titled "What We Must Do To Address The Historic Harms of Highways" offers nothing with regard to that with any of the existing urban expressways, such as the D.C. SW-SE Freeway (which really needs a major project to reconstruct with added capacity to deal with the bottleneck, within new tunnel shells equipped with vehicular exhaust filtration, underground.
Strong Towns does this typically in conformance to its jesuitical, neo medievalist opposition to any new roads.
Smart Towns needs to get its facts straight, as well as abandon its neo medievalist idiotology, and start consideration of reasonable design solutions for a host of major underground, filtrated urban highway projects for both existing and new roads.
