A large federal program designed to physically reconnect impoverished neighborhoods with the larger cities they exist in is now being rolled out by the Department of Transportation.
The Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Program was created as part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act with the goal of removing existing access and mobility barriers such as highways and train tracks that border low-income communities.
Planners have for decades looked at the impact of federal highway construction slicing though historic, settled neighborhoods in such cities as Cincinnati, Detroit, Houston, and Miami. In New Orleans the Treme neighborhood was cut off from the rest of the city due to the building of an Interstate 10 ramp that also uprooted hundreds of historic oak trees.
According to a study published two years ago by the Social Impact Review, “urban planners disproportionally and sometimes purposely routed freeways through the neighborhoods where people of color lived, or used these freeways to create boundary lines between White and Black communities.”
Late last year, the New York Times pointed to a Transportation Department study estimating that over a million people across the country have been displaced by highway construction projects beginning in the late 1950s.
The paper added: “Hundreds of thousands more were forced to move by urban renewal projects, with scant assistance provided to those relocated.”
Now the Department of Transportation is announcing up to $198 million in available grant funding for its Reconnecting Communities program for cities and communities, with $50 million of that amount to be used for technical assistance.
A second, and substantially larger effort is coming through the Neighborhood Access and Equity Program, offering $3.1 billion in planning grants and construction grants, among other things.
In a statement, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg remarked that “transportation should never divide communities—its purpose is to connect people to jobs, schools, housing, groceries, family, places of worship and more.”
In an effort to expedite the funding process, the Transportation Department is allowing grant applicants to apply for support from either the Reconnecting Communities or Neighborhood Access and Equity programs via a single application.
By combining the two grant availabilities into one application, said Buttigieg, “We are making it easier for communities to seek and receive the funding they need to build a better, safer, inclusive infrastructure for the future.”
Earlier this year the Transportation Department awarded upwards of $185 million for Reconnecting Communities projects in 45 states.
By Garry Boulard
