White suburban annexation followed the physical expansion of transportation lines

Evidence

The housing stock was generally poorer than that in the city, with more than a third of its homes dilapidated or without running water. As late as the 1950s the section had no library, no park, no doctor or dentist. It was four miles to the nearest drugstore, and nine to the closest hospital. That sense of isolation, however, quickly faded. “We soon found ourselves in the path of Atlanta’s enormous urban growth,” the Adamsville Civic Club noted. “Expressways began reaching out to serve our traffic, and people from counties beyond us began using our stores. Open fields became dotted with homes. We were swiftly being transformed into an urban community.” And as urban developments spread into Adamsville, so did black residential expansion. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 192

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Supports the grafting/trees-as-infrastructure angle only loosely, but more strongly connects to how infrastructure expansion (expressways) redrew the spatial frontier that segregationist boundaries then had to police.
• XREF: connects to: Early industrial cities expanded spatially by annexing surrounding townships — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 326; Urban spatial expansion enabled large-scale segregation of people and activities. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 327

Broader Connections

• Urban spatial expansion enabled large-scale segregation of people and activities. #expands (0.74) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 327
• Early industrial cities expanded spatially by annexing surrounding townships #expands (0.72) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 326