Article ID: CBB001212864

“We Must Destroy You to Save You”: Highway Construction and the City as a Modern Commons (2011)

unapi

Gioielli, Robert (Author)


Radical History Review
Volume: 109
Pages: 62--82


Publication Date: 2011
Edition Details: Part of a special issue, “New Approaches to Enclosures”
Language: English

This essay explores how certain residents of Baltimore, Maryland, in the late 1960s perceived governmental efforts to construct an urban highway system as an enclosure of the commons. Baltimore's political and business leaders believed that highways were required to keep the city, and particularly downtown businesses, economically competitive. Highway plans targeted African American and, to a lesser extent, working-class white neighborhoods. Because it destroyed community resources, limited housing options, and caused general degradation in surrounding neighborhoods, residents saw the construction of the highway as a form of enclosure. This is an inversion of the traditional definition of enclosure; the road was for public use, whereas much of the property condemned and destroyed was privately owned. But antihighway activists argued that the road would only benefit a privileged few, primarily white suburbanites, while destroying resources publicly available to minority and working-class communities. Understanding Baltimore's highway protests as anti-enclosure activism shows how the residents of postwar cities in the United States experienced destructive urban renewal and highway construction projects. It also portends recent efforts by municipal governments to condemn and reappropriate urban land for private development, while simultaneously claiming that these actions are for the public good.

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Description On perceptions of residents of Baltimore, Maryland, in the late 1960s to a government-built urban highway system.


Included in

Article Armiero, Marco (2011) Enclosing the Sea: Remaking Work and Leisure Spaces on the Naples Waterfront, 1870--1900. Radical History Review (p. 13). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001212864/

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Authors & Contributors
Fernandez, Rodrigo
Jessa Lingel
Valentina Roxo
John Christopher
Know, Hannah
Hendrikse, Reijer
Concepts
Technology and society
Roads and highways
Technology and economics
Technology and politics
Building construction
Urban history
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
Places
Baltimore (Maryland, U.S.)
United States
France
Rome (Italy)
Maryland (U.S.)
South Korea
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