Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx is encouraging road developers to think carefully before placing a highway through the middle of a neighborhood.
The Atlantic reports that Foxx’s grandparents lived such a neighborhood, and the result was a disconnection of the cut-off part of the neighborhood from the city and opportunity.
Now, Foxx wants to do something about that. The news agency reports that, during a speech on March 29, he announced that he will launch an effort to push federal, state, and local transportation decision-makers to agree to “connect people to opportunity” when they make decisions about building transportation.
Foxx wants decision-makers to keep three principles in mind as they make decisions:
- While transportation needs to connect people to opportunities, it should also “invigorate opportunities within communities.”
- Projects need to take into account communities that “have been on the wrong side of transportation decisions,” and figure out ways to make them stronger.
- The projects should be built for and by the communities they go through.
“If we wonder how this set of problems was created, it was a combination of federal money and state and local decision-making,” Foxx told the news agency before the speech. “The same federal, state, and local governments that created these problems have an equally powerful ability to solve them.”
According to the news agency, the governors of Virginia, Nevada, and Washington State have already signed on, as well as Baltimore’s mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.
