HOT TOPICS
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE:
Will ODOT’s $800 million freeway widening restore Albina, or just repeat past injustices?
What destroyed the Albina community? What will it take to restore it? For decades, Portland’s segregation forced nearly all its AfricanAmerican residents to live in or near the lower Albina neighborhood. In the late fifties and early sixties, the construction of Memorial Coliseum, urban renewal and finally, the I-5 freeway, all triggered the neighborhood’s decline. Everyone now acknowledges that the construction of the I-5 Freeway through Albina was a classic example of institutional racism. Today, we’re being told by ODOT, the same agency that built the freeway through the neighborhood in the first place, that its $800 million Rose Quarter widening project will somehow make amends for that injustice. But will it? The big question going forward is how to right that wrong. If we’re seeking restorative justice, what will it take to make a viable neighborhood? It was the cars, not just the freeway that destroyed Albina It wasn’t so much the freeway that undermined the health of the neighborhood, it was all the cars the freeway attracted. In 1962, the Oregon State Highway Department carved Interstate 5 through the heart of this neighborhood, directly demolishing more than 300 homes which it did not replace. The indirect effects of the freeway, and its attendant traffic were equally, if not more, devastating. By injecting a flood of cars into the area, the freeway led to the collapse of the local neighborhood. In the aftermath of freeway construction, I-5 turned the bustling Albina neighborhood from houses and shops, to a collection
WORDS BY | JOE CORTRIGHT
“Most of the decline in population in Albina happened years after the freeway was built.” of car dealers, gas stations and parking lots. Even then, we knew freeways killed neighborhoods: James Marston Fitch wrote in The New York Times in 1960: “The automobile’s appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving and parked, it devours urban land, leaving buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous and ugly traffic.” Most of the decline in population in Albina happened years after the freeway was built. The flood of cars undercut neighborhood livability, and the population steadily declined in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. As people moved away, many African-American-owned neighborhood businesses that served local residents closed up shop. ODOT claims its proposal to spend as much as $800 million is supposed to revitalize the neighborhood. However, the flaw is that it widens the freeway--pushing it even closer to other uses like the Harriet Tubman Middle School F LOS S IN
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