How do you address highways that have cut through communities?

There’s a federal fund to address highways that cut through minority and low-income neighborhoods, like the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans. But should the noisy highway be upgraded or moved away?

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Many U.S. highways have an unfortunate racist legacy. Federal planners often routed them directly through low-income, Black and brown neighborhoods, dividing communities and polluting the air. Now the Biden administration is trying to repair some of the harms. But as Drew Hawkins in New Orleans found, not everyone agrees on the best way to do that.

DREW HAWKINS, BYLINE: For more than a century, Claiborne Avenue was the economic and cultural heart of Black life in New Orleans. But then in the 1960s, Interstate 10 came along, and a section of it plowed right through Treme, one of the oldest Black neighborhoods in the country. Claiborne Avenue now lies in the shadow of the elevated highway called the Claiborne Expressway. Over the years, there have been some efforts to enliven the empty and unused spaces underneath the highway overhead. Nine years ago, they put a playground here, but no children play here. There’s trash and needles scattered around, and it’s so loud it’s hard to hold a conversation.

AMY STELLY: How you doing?

HAWKINS: Good. How are you?

STELLY: I’m doing well.

HAWKINS: Amy?

STELLY: Yes.

HAWKINS: Amy Stelly suggested I meet her here. She lives just over a block away in her childhood home.

What about kids playing here?

STELLY: Kids never come here because kids are smart. It’s the adults who aren’t. It’s the adults who built the playground under the interstate.

HAWKINS: Stelly is an artist and urban designer. She also started the Claiborne Avenue Alliance with other residents to try to do something about the noisy, polluting highway looming above. For her, there’s only one way to fix it.

STELLY: Removal is the only cure.

HAWKINS: Stelly and her alliance submitted a proposal to President Biden’s…