The Interstate Bypass as an Unintended Territorial Policy: Long-Term Socio-Economic, Health, and Racial Impacts on Tuskegee, Alabama, and the Black Belt Region

Policy initiatives intended to achieve spatial outcomes can often have spatial outcomes that extend well beyond the policy objective itself. One example of this can be seen in the Territorial Impact of the Interstate 85 Bypass (I-85 Bypass) on the city of Tuskegee, AL. Tuskegee represents an important historical community of African Americans who were excluded from direct access to the Interstate during the implementation of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Although the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 did not serve as regional development policy, the manner in which it was constructed spatially created a permanent shift in economic geography within the surrounding area. The investigation utilized a mixed-methods approach including: historical analysis, spatial data creation, qualitative accounts of residents, and a county difference-in-difference method at the County level. Analyses of the Decennial Census (1950–2020), population estimates (2020–2024), and Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Income data (1969–2023) reveal that Macon County has continuously lost population and incomes compared to adjacent counties with direct interstate access (particularly Lee County). Difference-in-difference analyses correlate these differences to bypassing rather than regional trends. Therefore, the results of this analysis become further evidence that a formally non-spatial infrastructure policy, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, produced a permanent, unintended effect on the local economy by creating a permanent spatial partitioning of local economies between those counties with direct interstate access and those counties without access to an interstate. JEL Classification R42 · R58 · O18 · H54