Princeton University

An opinion essay by historian Teal Arcadi, adapted from his new book "Concrete Leviathan," revisits Syracuse's role as a national testing ground for infrastructure policy. In the 1940s, Fortune magazine chose Syracuse as a model mid-sized city for postwar planning, work that helped justify demolishing the historically Black 15th Ward to build Interstate 81 — part of a nationwide pattern in which highway construction displaced roughly 1 million Americans, disproportionately from poor and nonwhite neighborhoods.

Decades later, Syracuse became a model again, this time for repair: the city's decision to remove the aging I-81 viaduct and replace it with a "community grid" has inspired similar highway-removal efforts in cities including Oakland, Tulsa and Buffalo. Arcadi argues the project's success in righting past wrongs remains uncertain, warning that gentrification could overtake efforts to rebuild a mixed-income community. He proposes a federal "Community Equity Protection Bureau," modeled on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to give residents real democratic input into future infrastructure decisions.