We have the same road situation here - an Interstate that cut the minority community in half and caused it to go downhill even faster than it might have otherwise. No one has had the nerve to suggest removing it, which would be almost impossible, but they are finally trying ways to mitigate the problem (several decades too late).
I don't think people were quite hypocritical enough back when it was built to have said it would improve things for the people there, they just didn't care about any problems it would cause, and the people who were about to suffer from it didn't have any means of stopping it.
And speaking of "urban renewal" in the sixties, our local University had the surrounding area declared "blighted" and took the land and about 200 houses from a lot of unfortunate people. In later years I thought that if some third-world dictator had arbitrarily removed a village, driven the people out of their homes, and bombed the houses so he could expand his summer palace, he would be indicted by the UN for crimes against humanity.
I don't think people were quite hypocritical enough back when it was built to have said it would improve things for the people there, they just didn't care about any problems it would cause, and the people who were about to suffer from it didn't have any means of stopping it.
And speaking of "urban renewal" in the sixties, our local University had the surrounding area declared "blighted" and took the land and about 200 houses from a lot of unfortunate people. In later years I thought that if some third-world dictator had arbitrarily removed a village, driven the people out of their homes, and bombed the houses so he could expand his summer palace, he would be indicted by the UN for crimes against humanity.