Interstate-funded suburbanization triggered mass white flight that undercut urban renewal

Evidence

By razing impoverished areas downtown and segregating the races in the western section, Atlanta’s leaders hoped to keep downtown and its surroundings a desirable destination for middle-class white people looking to shop and spend. Articulating a civic vision of racial peace and economic progress, Hartsfield bragged that Atlanta was “The City Too Busy to Hate.” But urban renewal ultimately failed to keep white residents inside the city. Downtown redevelopment, as was often the case, proved to be more disruptive in its means and less impressive in its ends than city planners had promised. Rather than wait for the central city to be “renewed,” many white people decided to move themselves to suburbs that were already new and, with the arrival of the interstate highways, were now affordable and accessible. During the 1960s, roughly sixty thousand white people left the city, with many of them relocating to the suburbs along the northern rim. When another hundred thousand left in the 1970s, a local joke had it that Atlanta had become “The City Too Busy Moving to Hate.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1201

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Echoes the Grafting & Growth theme: infrastructure built with one stated aim (renewed downtown) produces the exact opposite outcome, which echoes how tree-planting schemes often backfire — a recurring pattern of infrastructural unintended consequences worth foregrounding.
• XREF: connects to: A single expressway’s noise and decline triggered cascading white flight and urban decay — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 3722; White flight developed independently in cities across both North and South — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 37; White passenger flight predated actual bus desegregation, beginning at the mere threat of it — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 271 (+6 more)