The Inner Loop: Segregation in Rochester

Urban Development and Argument

The importance of social discourse in communities has been threatened for decades as urban developers in many cities have chosen to favor roadways and fast travel to the personal exchanges that walkable cities have to offer. (Petti, A Geospatial Analysis) When a city lacks walk-ability, it lacks connectivity on a ground level. In short, no one gets to know their neighbor when there’s a 6-lane highway separating them. This problem is only exacerbated by the country’s history of segregation and alienation of people in poverty across many urban spaces. (Stromberg, Highways Gutted American Cities) As we will find out, built spaces have a severe impact on how communities develop and how city’s function as a result.

The Rochester NY Inner Loop: Border Lines

The Inner Loop in Rochester, NY is one such a barrier. It separates downtown from the city neighborhoods surrounding it. Although it in not impossible to access downtown, many streets that previously lead in are not blocked by a 6-lane roadway that circles the business district at 45mph.

The Inner Loop: The Structure

The Inner Loop, along with preventing activity in downtown Rochester and its neighborhoods, also worked as a moat-like structure which created a physical barrier for people living in the neighborhoods surrounding downtown. (Petti, A Geospatial Analysis)

The Inner Loop: The Acquisition

https://rochistory.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/out-of-the-loop-pt-3-a-before-and-after-look-at-the-neighborhoods-of-the-inner-loop/

In addition, in order to build the highway, the city had to acquire the businesses, houses, apartments, etc. on the streets that they were choosing to demolish. (Morry, Out of the Loop Pt.3) The acquisition was so expansive that some streets don’t even exist anymore.

The Government's Role

“Making maximum use of funds and manpower, the State of New York has streamlined many of its functions, including the important land-taking procedures. In 1959, attorneys from the Law Department were assigned to Public Works District Offices to expedite title clearances and the settlement of property owners’ claims. By legislative or administrative action taken on Governor Rockefeller’s recommendation, the state has provided moving expenses and interest on claims, prorated local real property taxes so that owners pay such taxes only or the period they occupy, and offered owner’s 60% of the state appraisal when a settlement of claim cannot be reached.” (New York State Department of Works, A Short History)

American Roadways

“The 48,000 miles of interstate highway that would be paved across the country during the 1950s, '60s, and '70s were a godsend for many rural communities. But those highways also gutted many cities, with whole neighborhoods torn down or isolated by huge interchanges and wide ribbons of asphalt. Wealthier residents fled to the suburbs, using the highways to commute back in by car. That drained the city's tax bases and hastened their decline.” (Stromberg, Highways Gutted American Cities). Stromberg states that the design of the inner state system was originally devised by highway engineers and the CEO of General Motors at the time, Charles Erwin Wilson. He also notes that there were no urban planners affiliated with the creation of these plans for the inner state highways that would cut through cities across America. As a result of these city inner state plans, the Inner Loop was built. This became a huge barrier for neighborhoods that hindered access into downtown, while at the same time separating the neighborhoods of Rochester from one another. Along with this, more importantly, it separated the poor black neighborhoods from the wealth of the business district.

Inner Loop: The Acquisition

In order to build the highway, the city had to acquire the businesses, houses, apartments, etc. on the streets that they were choosing to demolish. (Morry, Out of the Loop Pt.3)

“As of 1961, there was some FHA money for relocating, but this only applied to mortgages (not rents) and required a decent credit rating to qualify.” (Finn, 2018)

Redlining, Rochester, and The Great Migration

The Great Migration was a time when African American migrant workers were moving north to find work on farms, lead to an increase in African American population in Rochester. (Wiegand, Segregation and Redlining Rochester) At the same time, and in response to the Great Migration, the city also saw a major shift in the white population. They began moving into the suburbs in pursuit of the popular suburban (white) life ideal that had emerged during this time. (Hill, pg.18)

Redlining, Rochester, and the Great Migration

The practice of red lining determined whether a neighborhood was desirable, undesirable, or hazardous depending on the area’s economic status, number of immigrants, and type of workers (blue collar, white collar, migrant, etc.). (Wiegand, Segregation and Redlining Rochester)

The process of redlining was a systematic technique to contain all the poor in one area, but during the Great Migration there was a deliberate segregation of African Americans into these poor communities. Apart from the Corn hill district and from South Avenue up through University Avenue, these neighborhoods remain poor today. (City of Rochester, City Wide Rochester Housing Market Study)

Racist Housing Practices

The FHA (Federal Housing Authority) would not approve applicants that were black, and landowners/landlords wouldn’t rent to black people in certain areas. (Chang, Living in a Poor Neighborhood Changes Everything About Your Life) African Americans were also not permitted to move into the suburbs either because the FHA would not approve their loans, or the developers specifically said that African Americans were not allowed to live in those neighborhoods. (Wiegand, Segregation and Redlining Rochester) They were forced to live in the poorer and more hazardous areas because they were not able to find housing elsewhere. (Chang, Living in a Poor Neighborhood)

“The plan to locate a public housing project on the tract of relatively undeveloped land on the city’s northeastern outskirts would normally have aroused some sort of opposition from the adjoining residents, most of whom owned their modest freestanding houses, but the outburst in 1949 was aggravated by the fact that many of the prospective tenants would be negroes. The objection would not have existed a decade earlier, when Rochester’s Negro population, representing but one percent of the total, was fairly widely distributed with its heaviest concentration in the old third ward where many had lived for generations and owned their own houses. In the forties, however, a new migration from the south had more than doubled the city’s non-white population, with most of the newcomers settling in the seventh ward. That old immigrant district, which had for decades sheltered the poorest newcomers of each new migration, was mow frankly recognized as a slum.” (McKelvey, pg.18-19) Rochester City Historian, 1965

The American Inner-State

These road systems weren’t just a tool of segregation in Rochester, one of the original purposes was to separate ethnic communities and physically pave over undesirable neighborhoods with road ways.

“The idea was 'let's get rid of the blight,'" says DiMento. "And places that we'd now see as interesting, multi-ethnic areas were viewed as blight." Highways were a tool for justifying the destruction of many of these areas.” (Stromberg, Highways Gutted American Cities)

Rochester's Destruction: Make Way for the Inner Loop

"The explanation, in almost every case, is that the relatively well-off, influential people in those cities were able to stop the urban highways that would have gone through their neighborhoods," Norton says, pointing to Wisconsin Avenue, in DC, which was slated to become a highway but never did due to the protest of wealthy residents of the city's Northwest quadrant.

"The destruction mostly happened in the most disenfranchised neighborhoods," he says. "It's astounding how selective it was."

(Stromberg, Highways Gutted American Cities)

Inner Loop Destruction

https://rochistory.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/out-of-the-loop-pt-3-a-before-and-after-look-at-the-neighborhoods-of-the-inner-loop/

The Detroit wall story is more explicit about the developer’s intentions, but Rochester was not hiding the fact that African Americans were not welcome downtown. The city made a commercial in 1963 to promote downtown as a new shopping center after the construction of Midtown Plaza, along with boasting about the big businesses that gave Rochester some stardom. It also boasts of the best industries and people, more specifically, “clean people”, and “stable industries, stable people.”

Rochester's Wall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVpjCywL3B8

The Crescent of Poverty

“For residents in the Crescent of Poverty, these physical barriers result in economic barriers as well.” (Petti, A Geospatial Analysis) The crescent of poverty, “is noted for having the highest rates of teen pregnancy, crime, unemployment, families on public assistance, infant mortality, and poverty within the city of Rochester.” (Bowen, pg.9) Bowen also says on page 12, “The percentage of minority (African American, Hispanic or Latino, two or more races, other) citizens for 14605, 14609, 14621, and the city of Rochester are 92%, 40%, 74%, and 56% respectively. Zip codes 14605 and 14621 have a significantly larger minority population than the City of Rochester (U.S. Census Bureau 2000).” The problem arises that once a person is in poverty, it is difficult for them to get out of poverty. (Chang, Living in a Poor Neighborhood)

“Research shows it's like breathing in bad air; the more you're exposed to it, the more it hurts you. And it isn't just because of the lack of opportunity. It's that living in these distressed areas changes your brain — and your kids' brains.” (Chang, Living in a Poor Neighborhood)

All Images came from a Vox article posted on April, 4. 2018

https://www.vox.com/2016/6/6/11852640/cartoon-poor-neighborhoods

The Solution

To diversify neighborhoods with different economic statuses because when poor children grow up in wealthier neighborhoods, they do better in the future. Coming out of poverty by living in a diversified neighborhood seems more attainable when the same opportunities are offered. But first, the spaces must be more equal. There needs to be less segregation of races and class, and more inclusive practices. But what’s in the way? The current Inner Loop project seems like a progressive move toward a more open and accessible downtown, but to whom does it benefit? Not the people that need it the most.

Still Showing Signs of Racial Preference

In zip-code 14607, which contains much of the eastern part that has been redeveloped, 78 percent of the area’s population is white.

On the Other Side

Whereas the crescent of poverty is known for having the highest number of people in extreme poverty (Community Assessment, 2012), people in the 14607 have a median income of $42,000 per year.