According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, equity in a social sense means “freedom from disparities in the way people of different races, genders, etc. are treated”, and often more specifically referring to “freedom from disparities in the way people of different races, genders, etc. are treated.”
Socioeconomic and geographic equity is a key consideration in the work of the volunteer-based Lid I-5 Seattle campaign. The core purpose of the urban freeway lid concept is to expand public land and reduce the environmental harms of high-volume traffic in the middle of densely populated neighborhoods. Freeway lids require significant public resources to achieve, so asking whether such a lid project is an equitable endeavor is a natural and important question.
Unfortunately, that question was rarely asked about the original freeways themselves in the early years of the American experiment with the interstate program. The 48,000 mile system was largely scoped, planned, and under construction starting in the 1950’s, well before keystone legislation like the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1970 Environmental Protection Act. These laws started to require major public works to conduct meaningful public engagement and offer community mitigation measures, though still did not fully prevent the worst impacts. Freeway widenings and extensions continue today, even as the science finds that larger roads bring more traffic and harmful pollution.
Still, equity has emerged as an important value among urban planners and elected leaders. Amid Seattle’s decades-long affordable housing and homelessness challenges, transit expansion aspirations, large gaps in the sidewalk network, and other infrastructure needs, where do freeway lids sit in the priorities for public spending?
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The Northwest Urbanist 