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New Orleans’ Claiborne Avenue was once a wide street with a collection of diverse citizens that provided an important color to New Orleans’ downtown. Creoles, Haitian refugees, white Creoles, and Caribbean and European immigrants all called Claiborne home. It wasn’t particularly wealthy but it was an important part of New Orleans’ diversity. It was an example of good urbanism with oak trees planted along the ground, growing to provide shade in the hot, swampy summers of the South. It also included green spaces and a waterfront for its residents, had mixed commercial and residential buildings, and people walked all along it, not needing cars to get anywhere. However, America’s car dependency soon destroyed this vibrant community. An expressway was built right through Claiborne and poverty, blight, and crime now run rampant. It was hit especially hard by Katrina in 2006.

The best way to right the wrongs done to Claiborne is something that should happen all across the country: the removal of inner city expressways and increasing funding in infrastructure to make these streets more walkable and accessible by residents. Investing in infrastructure and public transportation provides people affordable and accessible transportation that improves their lives directly.