Isn't this kind of leap? I've lived plenty of expensive places (e.g. downtown San Diego, Boston, Los Angeles) that had free/highways close to expensive property. What is leading you to believe highway construction targets the poor areas, other than those real estate markets are already depressed (which is possibly why poor people live there)?
Remember this happened in the 40s and 50s. Plenty has changed since then, including the gentrification of poor areas near highways. But that doesn’t change the history of the US highway system.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/role-of...
No. Here are two specific examples:
1. The Cross Bronx Expressway, which basically created the South Bronx[1]. "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro is one of HN's most frequently recommended books, and covers this subject (as well as other racially-motivated planning projects by Robert Moses) extensively.
2. I-65 and I-165 in Mobile, AL cut directly through the historic "Africatown" neighborhood[2]. Residents regularly complain about both automotive and nearby industrial pollution, encouraged by ease of access by the highway[3].
Most of these effects are more visible on the East Coast rather than the West Coast, since the East's older and denser cities had fewer "paths of least resistance" when building the Interstate Highway System during the midcentury. But it wouldn't particularly surprise me if the areas that are now expensive in the cities that you mentioned were originally cleared for highways under "slum clearance" or similar laws.
Edit: This is anecdotal, but I figured I'd mention it anyways: I grew up in Manhattan, and virtually everybody I grew up with has (or had) asthma. Some of that is to be expected from other pollution sources (in particular, NYC used to burn very dirty heating oil), but I also went to public schools that were directly alongside major state and interstate highways.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Bronx_Expressway#Urban_d...
[2]: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/19/733996699/alabamas-africatown...
[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/26/africatown-s...
Portland's I-205 has much the same story, my father lived through that terrible process where many of his friends had their homes razed to build yet another freeway.
Links to read below. #2 specifically has moving images/graphics.
They're currently expanding... to be fair they will add a small amount of benefits to 'bridge the gap' like a small park over a new small lowered section (but i think like only a couple blocks wide).
But it's still an expansion and the construction is bringing even more problems & nuisance.
Plus mostly young, mostly white expensive new construction apartment buildings have been creeping north and displacing a lot of historically black low income families. I think infilling and repurposing some of the old warehouse type space is good but the inequity is undeniable.
https://www.hcn.org/issues/47.22/in-denvers-latino-neighborh... https://denverite.com/2016/10/08/air-quality-legacy-issue-el... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/denver-interstate-70-e... https://www.denverpost.com/2019/06/30/asthma-elyria-swansea-...
https://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/article237167884.html
Many other examples:
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/role-of...
https://www.dispatch.com/in-depth/lifestyle/2020/12/03/black...
https://catalyst.independent.org/2020/04/02/how-the-u-s-gove...
https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/06/bitter-history-behind-hi...
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/top-infrastructure-officia...
https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/urban-renewals-shamefu...
etc
It's that joke about how real estate developments are named things like "Shady Grove" after whatever they destroyed to build it, but taken one step further.
Cut down the trees and name the neighborhood after them, then cut down Oak Street and name a highway after it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Avenue
Fun tidbit: there's a house along the road that is not what it appears to be:
-Boyle Heights was a predominately Latino community in east LA, which had the East LA interchange built right through it (I-10/I-5).
-Communities along what is currently I-105 were opposed to the construction since the 1970s for the typical NIMBY reasons, and these communities were predominately Black.
And the reverse:
-CA-2 was supposed to route from Silver Lake to Santa Monica via Beverly Hills, but community opposition prevented the freeway from being built and is why there's large parts of LA (mid-city/Melrose) that are far away from a freeway.
-I-710 was intended to connect Long Beach to Pasadena, but the city of South Pasadena protested heavily in preventing the freeway from being built and closing the gap. This litigation occurred up until the late-2010s when the CA State Assembly and Governor Newsom ended the 710 project once and for all.