TEAR DOWN HIGH-RISES TOO AND REALLY MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN:

As Washington lawmakers look to big infrastructure projects to get Americans back to work after the pandemic, progressives are making the case that the money would be best spent tearing down urban highways -- and reinvesting in the Black and brown communities torn apart by those bad road projects decades ago.

In a groundbreaking new policy proposal, nonprofits Transportation for America and Third Way recommended that the next administration create a new, $5-billion competitive grant program that states could draw on to tear down their misguided downtown highways and redevelop the land that's left behind in better ways.

But notably, the proposal also specifies that all that newly highway-free land would be held in trust for the benefit of the communities that surround it -- communities that, often, are the direct descendants of Black and brown residents whose lives were upended when the highways were built in the first place. The groups say spending the money is essential to maximizing the antiracist potential of the major transportation investment.

"[The land trust idea] is really key to regenerating wealth in communities that highway projects helped bankrupt in the first place," said Alex Laska, transportation policy adviser at Third Way. "It's really important to talk about not just the economic benefits of highway removal, but how to make sure that the people who already live there see that benefit."

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