User:Hdlasry/sandbox

In 1961, the construction of the massive East LA Interchange began. Consuming 135 acres, the interchange is three times larger than the average highway system, even expanding at some points to twenty-seven lanes in width. Also known as the Spaghetti Bowl, the enormity of the structure and the complexity of its many routes called for a $17,000 blueprint model of the highway long before construction even began. During its construction, engineers built thirty-two bridges, twenty walls, excavated 1,500,000 yards of earth, laid 23,545 feet of concrete pipe, used 4,200,000 yards of structural steel and 13,200,000 pounds of reinforced steel to complete the busiest freeway interchange in the world. Today, having replaced the world’s largest inter-urban transit system, the interchange handles around 1.7 million passing vehicles each day and has produced one of the most traffic congested regions in the world as well as one of the most concentrated pockets of air pollution in America.

Since the 1920s, both elite and working-class communities throughout Southern California have witnessed the enforcement of highly effective racial covenants and other exclusionary measures that aim to distinguish separate white and non-white neighborhoods. By the 1960s, the federal government declared certain areas as “White Group Zones” which forced any non-whites in those areas out of their homes. The result? Boyle Heights, a multicultural, interethnic neighborhood in East Los Angeles whose celebration of cultural difference has made it a role model for the level of democracy for which the entire nation strives. Additionally, since the establishment of multicultural neighborhoods like Boyle Heights was a byproduct of the gentrification of minorities into separate urban area homelands, people in these interracial communities have become considered “disposable people” who are desirable targets for gentrification. The linking of racial depravity with urban space associated certain neighborhoods like Boyle Heights with slum conditions and urban decay, an association which affirmed the perception of these neighborhoods as “removable” and that they should make way for plans to improve social conditions and urban progress. The 50s and 60s in America was a period of intense urban renewal and ethnic cleansing. As neighborhoods became increasingly less diverse, the geographical layout of Los Angeles made the targeting of racial populations relatively easy for local officials. The racial nativist attitudes of local officials, civic leaders, and protected middle-class populations prompted major urban reform efforts to move and restructure populations at the expense of those living in multicultural neighborhoods like Boyle Heights.

During the 1950s and 60s, Boyle Heights witnessed patterns of invasive highway construction that crippled the neighborhood for many years in a number of ways. This period of urban renewal and ethnic cleansing elicited the building of several highways including the East LA Interchange which intersects and crosses through Boyle Heights with multiple routes. The sectioning of Boyle Heights by highways into smaller communities not only displaced thousands of residents, but it also segregated Boyle Heights inhabitants in a way that isolated their voices of opposition to oppression and even further deprived them of having significant political weight. The close proximity of residential homes and schools to the interchange also poses as a health risk for the community's inhabitants.