Disconnecting Communities: Measuring the Social Impacts of Freeways

A new study quantifies just how much urban freeways disrupt social networks, reports Eliana Perozo in Next City. The study assessed social connectivity in the 50 biggest U.S. cities and found the least social connections in neighborhoods with freeways.

This comes as no surprise to planners and advocates who have, for decades, underscored the negative impacts of highways on neighborhoods. By the U.S. Department of Transportation’s own estimates, interstates have displaced over one million people.

According to one of the study’s authors, “highways connect over long distances, but divide over short ones.” The study found examples of freeways that act as barriers both between communities of different races and intraracially. “Nashville’s I-40 – which split up a vibrant middle-class Black neighborhood, displacing about 80% of Nashville’s Black businesses, more than 600 homes and close to 1,500 people – is one of many such cases.”

Luca Aiello, lead author of the study, explained how this can translate into economic loss: “[Highways] limit social opportunities, and those social opportunities are connected directly to financial opportunities.”

In acknowledgement of the social, economic, and public health impacts of freeways, the federal Reconnecting Communities program was created under the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to fund projects such as freeway removals and cap parks. Its future under the current administration, which rescinded USDOT guidelines that addressed equity, is unclear.