Critical Planning

Scholars have readily illustrated how European settlers’ colonial ideas of property influenced the formation of race. Yet, as the role of land and property changed within an American context, so too did the relationship between race and property. With emancipation and urbanization, cities began to confront racial mixing, leading to a movement to racialize not just individual property, but also entire places. This resulting racialization of place became acutely challenging for communities of color in the mid-century with the implementation of the new interstate highway system. While the disastrous impact of the highway system on communities of color has been increasingly researched, scholars have paid far less attention to how race shaped individuals’ propertied realities in the face of these federal and local actions. Using Austin, Texas, as a case study, I examine how the planning for the Interregional Highway 35 (IH-35) threatened Anglo, Black, and Mexican East Austin residents’ property. Ultimately, I assert that each community’s response was shaped by its race-based property realities. I conclude with a brief discussion on the broader implications of urban planning’s spatialization of the intertwining ideology of White racial advantage and property, and what it means to current efforts of racial repair.