Interstate Highways

After the construction of the Innerbelt Freeway and continued construction on the Lakeland Freeway, the plan seemed to be working. Cleveland experienced a brief period of industrial stability and prosperity in downtown. Slums were now quarantined into sections ensuring the safety of day-trippers downtown. But escalating crime and racial tensions increased the white exodus out of Cleveland and into the suburbs, a transition made complete by the rise of suburban retailers. Climate controlled shopping centers drained business from downtown retailers contributing to the further decay of the city.[1] Suburbanites no longer needed to patronize Cleveland retailers. They could stay safe and sound in their homogenous neighborhoods and never have to venture to the unsafe city, a situation that persists today. Geographer Thomas J. Baerwald explains this phenomenon as the insurrection of a “new downtown.”  “The freeways encircling large metropolises in the United States have spawned new business complexes that threaten the traditional supremacy of the central business district (CBD)” by reorientating middle class residents around a “suburban freeway corridor (SFC).”[2]