This article is part of a larger report, “Bring Back 6th: A Collective Vision for Reparative Justice & the Future of the Northside.”
The Minnesota Department of Transportation is evaluating road design alternatives for Olson Memorial Highway. For the Olson Memorial Highway project and Bring Back 6th highway removal proposal to respond to community needs, it is imperative that members of the public, particularly those of historically excluded groups, have the opportunity and feel empowered to make their voice heard in the decision-making process, and that those involved establish a process to center their input.
The Importance of Community-Driven Solutions
Embracing community voices and allowing residents to guide solutions leads to a safer, more inclusive public realm that reflects the existing community and reduces the risk of barriers, displacement, and disparities.
Over 23,000 people live within a half mile of Olson Memorial Highway through the northside of Minneapolis. All of these residents should have a voice in determining the future of their neighborhood.
Community-driven solutions are needed that bring in the voices of those who have been, and still are, impacted by the highway’s construction. The potential to address historic harms, provide health, safety, and mobility benefits to the community, and prevent unwanted future impacts can only be realized if the people affected are centrally involved in the planning and design of future projects on Olson Memorial Highway.
Historic Harms
This corridor has a history of injustice and inequality. Over a thousand primarily Black and Jewish residents of the 1920s and 1930s were displaced by demolition for Olson Memorial Highway that began in 1936. Displacement continued for the next 30 years as more homes and businesses were demolished for highway expansion and urban renewal projects.
Residents were further victimized as racist lending policies continued to disenfranchise residents of color, disinvestment further deteriorated the neighborhood, and the construction of I-94 created a barrier to Downtown Minneapolis. In later decades, urban renewal projects and additional highway construction displaced over one thousand more residents and created more barriers between North Minneapolis and the rest of the city. Through these projects, residents were rarely consulted but greatly impacted.
The construction of highways has long-term effects on economic inequalities, generational wealth, safety, public health, environmental degradation and pollution, and community resilience.
Present Day Impacts
These harms have impacted generations over the past century, creating disproportionate health and safety disparities that persist to this day. North Minneapolis has among the highest age-adjusted rates of asthma and lowest life expectancy rates in Minneapolis, which can be caused by exposure to pollution and environmental degradation.
Beyond pollution and environmental impacts, economic stability and access to daily needs and opportunities can also directly and indirectly affect a person’s physical and mental well-being. The neighborhoods along the corridor have mid- to high-poverty rates and experience some of the lowest median home values compared to the rest of Minneapolis.
Further, many residents do not own cars, possibly due to disability, high cost of car ownership, and inability to access a driver’s license. This creates accessibility barriers and means the current highway, which only accommodates vehicular travel, does not serve many people in the area.
Overcoming Displacement
Today, the Near North Minneapolis neighborhoods of Harrison and Heritage Park are diverse communities, including but not limited to people of Black/African-American, Somali, Oromo (Ethiopian), Laotian, Vietnamese, Hispanic, and American Indian descent. Diverse perspectives offer unique insight into what residents experience, what issues they face, and what solutions could be impactful. Creating a public realm that reflects the culture and meets the needs of the existing community is vital to avoid further displacement and gentrification.
The legacy of displacement along Olson Memorial Highway continued in recent years when the Metro Transit Blue Line light rail extension project was planned along a BNSF rail corridor, with a segment running along Olson Memorial Highway through North Minneapolis. The Blue Line planning, paired with city-wide housing shortages, is speculated to have led to further displacement of residents near the corridor, even though construction never began and this segment of the planned transit was relocated to a different corridor that has been difficult to access.
Displacement can occur in various forms where development is planned and implemented without public input and community-centered programs and policies. Identifying the conditions that past harms and inequities have led to underscores the importance of centering the specific needs and desires of the community in the creation of design concepts and programs and policies.
Near North continues to be a starting place for low-income and immigrant communities in Minneapolis. Despite the proximity to Downtown Minneapolis and several parks and greenways to the south and west, residents lack access to many amenities, forcing most to travel by car or depend on the unsafe walking infrastructure and multimodal transit.
In recent years, due to its proximity to Downtown Minneapolis and relatively affordable property values, the neighborhoods have seen increasing interest from middle- and upper-income families looking to buy a starter home.
To attract these generally whiter and wealthier new residents, real estate agents and developers have attempted to remove the “stigma” of living in North Minneapolis through false advertising and rebranding campaigns, including efforts to subsume the Harrison neighborhood into the whiter and wealthier Bryn Mawr neighborhood to the south (Harrison property listings claiming to be in Bryn Mawr), “NuLoop” (effort to tie Harrison into the upscale, trendy North Loop neighborhood to the northwest), and “West Market Business District” (effort to expand Downtown into Harrison).
These campaigns echo tactics of the past to elicit a turnover of residents, attempting to push long-time residents out in favor of incoming residents that represent historically advantaged demographics. This report outlines strategies to combat these and other intentional and unintentional efforts of displacement
and gentrification.
Forms of Displacement
Forms of displacement that have occurred in the Twin Cities include:
- Direct displacement occurs when residents can no longer afford to remain in their homes due to rising housing costs or are forced out by lease non-renewals, evictions, eminent domain, or physical conditions that render homes uninhabitable as investors await redevelopment opportunities.
- Indirect or exclusionary displacement occurs when low-income residents move out, but other low-income residents cannot afford to move in because rents and sales prices have increased, discriminatory policies such as banning tenants with housing vouchers, or changes in land use or zoning that change the character of residential development (such as eliminating units for households without children).
- Commercial displacement occurs when commercial rents increase, leading to the closure of small, locally owned businesses and the emergence of national chains.
- Cultural displacement occurs as the scale of residential change advances and the neighborhood character transforms, such that shops and services shift to focus on new residents. Remaining residents may feel a sense of dislocation despite remaining in the neighborhood.
- Gentrification is a process of neighborhood change that results in the transformation of a working-class or vacant area into middle-class residential or commercial use, and both the residential and cultural profile of the neighborhood change accordingly.
Note that gentrification can be distinct from displacement: gentrification can happen without displacement if low-income residents willingly move and are replaced by higher-income newcomers. Displacement can happen without gentrification if residents who move out are replaced by newcomers from the same demographic.
1937 | 6th Avenue North before the construction of Olson Memorial Highway
1945 | Construction showing significant destruction of 6th Avenue North homes and businesses
Today | Olson in its current alignment, with no remaining main street businesses
Learn more about the campaign to Bring Back 6th.
Once called the “Beale Street of Minneapolis,” the old Near-Northside was an integrated Black and Jewish community that was destroyed in 1939 for the construction of Olson Memorial Highway, a low-trafficked highway “to nowhere” that has been polluting the neighborhood ever since.