Editing Highway (section)

== Social effects ==
[[File:Construction on Century Freeway overpass on Harbor Freeway.jpg|thumb|The construction of [[Harbor Freeway]], and its subsequent displacement of homes in Los Angeles, California.{{cn|date=October 2024}}]]

Often reducing travel times relative to city or town streets, highways with limited access and grade separation can create increased opportunities for people to travel for business, trade or pleasure and also provide trade routes for goods. Highways can reduce commute and other travel time but additional road capacity can also release [[induced demand|latent traffic demand]]. If not accurately predicted at the planning stage, this extra traffic may lead to the new road becoming congested sooner than would otherwise be anticipated by considering increases in vehicle ownership. More roads allow drivers to use their cars when otherwise alternatives may have been sought, or the journey may not have been made, which can mean that a new road brings only short-term mitigation of traffic congestion.

[[File:Home_Owners'_Loan_Corporation_Philadelphia_redlining_map.jpg|thumb|The use of "[[Redlining]]" often would dictate where in cities highways would go through.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/articles/2023-05-five-ways-urban-planners-addressing-inequity|title=Five Ways Urban Planners Are Addressing a Legacy of Inequity |date=15 May 2023 |publisher=Lincoln Institute of Land Policy}}</ref>]]

Where highways are created through existing communities, there can be reduced [[community cohesion]] and more difficult local access. Consequently, property values have decreased in many cutoff neighborhoods, leading to decreased housing quality over time. Mostly in the U.S., many of these effects are from [[racist]] planning practices from before the advent of [[civil rights]]. This would result in the vast majority of displacement and social effects mostly going to people like African Americans.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-of-how-racism-shaped-interstate-highways|title=A Brief History Of How Racism Shaped Interstate Highways|first=Noel|last=King|publisher=[[NPR]] }}</ref>

In recent times, the use of [[freeway removal]] or the public policy of [[urban planning]] to demolish freeways and create mixed-use urban areas, parks, residential, commercial, or other land uses is being popular in many cities to combat most of the social problems caused from highways.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/articles/2020-03-deconstruction-ahead-urban-highway-removal-changing-cities|title=How Urban Highway Removal Is Changing Our Cities|date=14 April 2020 |publisher=Lincoln Institute of Land Policy}}</ref>