Stockton underwent spatial restructuring in the decades after the Second World War, and state and local government contributed and responded to these changes by implementing connected freeway and urban renewal programs. Historical and contemporaneous xenophobia and racism placed Chinatown, Japantown, and Little Manila in their path, with these enclaves deemed blighted and subject to “slum clearance.” The choice of freeway route was racially biased. The neighborhood surrounding an unchosen route was predominantly white, whereas that of the chosen route was predominantly home to people of color. Freeway construction during the 1960s and 1970s directly displaced hundreds of people and housing units downtown—mainly people of color, particularly Asians. The communities most harmed were the Asian American enclaves, where the housing stock declined by about three quarters between 1960 and 1970. The losses were not only physical, as the freeway and redevelopment eviscerated once vibrant ethnic commercial hubs. Because of long-standing economic and political marginalization, Asian Americans were relatively powerless to prevent the destruction; nonetheless, they fought to build affordable housing for their people, protect and in some cases relocate cultural institutions, and support surviving ethnic businesses. In the long run, Stockton failed to revitalize its downtown, while destroying its cultural diversity.
This project explores the various facets and implications of this history through many lenses. The research team employs quantitative methodologies to investigate four questions: 1) whether the choice of freeway paths was racially disparate, 2) what were the number and the racial composition of the people and housing directly impacted (i.e., dislocated) by freeway construction, 3) what were the indirect impacts of freeway construction on housing units and housing costs over time, and 4) what were the associated losses from urban renewal. The team utilizes qualitative methods as well to examine the human impacts on Asian Americans residents of the area and their political response. The project contributes both academically and practically. It complements the existing literature by its focus on an often-understudied group, Asian Americans, and by making the systemic dynamics of racism central to the analyses. The findings can also help reform and improve professional practice within the transportation arena to ensure racial fairness and equity.

The racial legacy of freeways has come into stark focus in the past year. A recent Los Angeles Times article calls the region’s freeway system “one of the most noxious monuments to racism and segregation in the country.” A key feature of past freeways construction has been neighborhood severance. Freeways disrupt the neighborhood street grid, creating particular hardships for pedestrians who must take circuitous routes to access transit and to walk to stores, schools, and other destinations. The impacts of disconnected streets on walking and public health are well documented, but the environmental justice dimension of connectivity has remained unexplored, as has the link between street connectivity and local planning efforts. Reducing neighborhood severance is also a key goal in Caltrans’ 2017 bicycle and pedestrian plan, Towards an Active California. The plan commits the agency to identify and improve highway crossings and to prioritize improvements based on equity criteria. The research team will test whether Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities suffer greater neighborhood severance effects based on four measures of connectivity: local street connectivity, connectivity for transit access, the number of freeway crossings per mile, and the quality of those crossings (e.g., pedestrian comfort). The first two measures are based on street characteristics such as circuity and the proportion of streets that are dead-ends. The project team will also examine the strength of the relationship between these four connectivity measures and the race/ethnic composition of the neighborhoods, based on 2020 Census block-level demographic data, and on the age of the constructed freeways, to determine whether planners have become more attuned to severance effects over time. Finally, the researchers will consider where new or upgraded crossings would yield the greatest connectivity benefits, particularly in BIPOC communities, by simulating the addition of new crossings and the removal of existing crossings, to determine which improvements have the greatest potential to reconnect street networks and improve pedestrian and bicycle access to transit.