I always used to wonder why, in other countries, you could live in the suburb but take a train to go shopping or work in the city—yet that's almost impossible in most of America. The answer, of course, is white supremacy.
Replies
There's a reason Georgetown (in DC) has no metro stop...
dec 5, 2024, 10:09 pm • 7 0 • view
Georgetown doesn't have one because it was insanely difficult/expensive to build a station there with the methods available at the time. There are plenty of other examples of how racism shaped the building of Metro (the green Line routing is full of them), but Georgetown is a bad choice.
dec 6, 2024, 8:12 am • 0 0 • view
Fair point. In my internet sleuthing, I have discovered you are correct. I totally agree with your point about the Green Line being a better example example. Or the deliberate effort to keep Anacostia isolated.
dec 6, 2024, 12:20 pm • 1 0 • view
Metro runs right under it, goddammit. Of course they eventually wanted one. Cool, you can pay for it then, since it'll be a lot more expensive now.
dec 6, 2024, 5:12 am • 2 1 • view
Weren't suburbs created so that white urban dwellers could escape the Brown and Black people moving to the cities yet still have access? Having lived in multiple states, I've always thought the availability and quality of public transportation reflected the area's attitude about non-rich people.
dec 5, 2024, 8:53 pm • 3 0 • view
Yeah it was called white flight. Also even though a very stiff read at points the color of law is a great book that talks about the very base of society is white supremacy. white flight is also a great book by Kevin kruse.
dec 5, 2024, 10:08 pm • 4 0 • view
Thanks for the recommendations. I'll definitely pick them up.
dec 5, 2024, 11:57 pm • 0 0 • view
When Ridgeland started building their bike trails, that was a common fear - that black people would use those trails to come to their lily-white subdivisions and commit crimes.
dec 5, 2024, 10:00 pm • 4 0 • view
A Denver suburb built a mall is beside a freeway, and had a light rail built beside it… that let riders out on the other side of the highway, without a bridge. This was not fixed until the mall had problems hiring staff who could afford traveling there on their pay….
dec 5, 2024, 10:14 pm • 2 0 • view
I live mid-townish (some would say suburbs) in a major city. There are buses on my street (both sides) that go straight to subway stations. If I'm going downtown, I always use transit (parking is impossible as well as impossibly expensive). It's so practical.
dec 5, 2024, 9:08 pm • 0 0 • view
I wrote a paper in undergrad about this. One study I referenced documented this issue in Baltimore. The suburbs (iirc) blocked expansion of the local rail line because they did not want black residents in Baltimore to have easier access to the suburbs…
dec 6, 2024, 4:06 am • 4 0 • view
Until I started reading @hcrichardson.bsky.social ‘s daily letters I didn’t understand how deeply embedded white supremacy was in the fabric of so much of the American life. I knew racism was rampant - I just didn’t realize how systemic it is.
dec 5, 2024, 9:09 pm • 0 0 • view
Crabgrass Frontier is a great background
dec 5, 2024, 8:50 pm • 0 0 • view
Fucked public transport system: racism. Fucked public healthcare system: racism. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
dec 6, 2024, 5:20 am • 1 0 • view
Every single time.
dec 5, 2024, 8:44 pm • 3 0 • view
One of the better things about being a New Yorker is that our city is a quick train ride away from beaches and mountains, and the suburbs. I never understood why our subways and other local train systems were not the model for every city in the country
dec 6, 2024, 4:07 am • 5 0 • view
This is absolutely true. I lived this in ATL.
dec 6, 2024, 3:28 am • 2 0 • view
it’s more than this it’s the triumph of the working class & automobile post-WW2 From 1945-75 US had an economy where, unlike many other countries almost every family could afford a car
dec 5, 2024, 8:37 pm • 2 0 • view
Both-and, with a vengeance. White flight + rise of car culture + urban disinvestment + racist redlining are all intertwined.
dec 6, 2024, 4:05 am • 4 0 • view
💯🎯
dec 5, 2024, 9:00 pm • 0 0 • view
Dear god. We are horrible humans.
dec 5, 2024, 8:55 pm • 1 0 • view
Oh hell yes. Very blatant, alas, in the Motor City itself, which had a robust regional mass transit system for decades till a multitude of factors including racism destroyed it. Virtually impossible now to get between city & some burbs at all without a car. Many more experts here w/details.
dec 6, 2024, 4:11 am • 2 0 • view
when I lived in Charlotte NC they built a light rail from downtown to the very wealthy white suburbs but not to anywhere else (but also here in Europe the railway lines around/between cities were mostly here before the population was that diverse so)
dec 5, 2024, 8:56 pm • 1 0 • view
According to DC lore, that’s the reason the rich Georgetown community rejected a Metro station when the system was being built in the 70s, but I think geology may also have played a role.
dec 5, 2024, 9:20 pm • 0 0 • view
I don't think so, & opposition didn't play as big a role as people think. The reason Metro sucked until fairly recently is it was designed primarily to get suburbanites to work. DC residents & recreation weren't really considered. That's why it stopped at midnight.
dec 6, 2024, 5:23 am • 0 0 • view
When the stations were being planned, Georgetown didn't really have a lot of workers or big workplaces. If it had, the rich people probably could not have stopped it. Metro wants to build a second tunnel to ease the Rosslyn bottleneck, Georgetown would get a station then.
dec 6, 2024, 5:27 am • 0 0 • view
That was one of the arguments against the Expo train line here in Los Angeles.
dec 5, 2024, 8:36 pm • 0 0 • view