Bulldozing homes to make room for a highway or train is an American tradition, even if we do it less often now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses#Criticism_and_The...

> Moses's critics charge that he preferred automobiles over people. They point out that he displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in New York City and destroyed traditional neighborhoods by building multiple expressways through them. The projects contributed to the ruin of the South Bronx and the amusement parks of Coney Island, caused the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants Major League Baseball teams to relocate to Los Angeles and San Francisco respectively, and precipitated the decline of public transport from disinvestment and neglect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain_in_the_United_S...

There used to be an entire road and tenement houses in Seattle where I5 is now. They’ve also taken all or part of many properties abutting the new rail project.

For us Westerners our highway system was already pretty much complete by the 1980s so none of us actually remember how it went. But when we see pictures in historybooks you will see sprawling construction sites with bulldozers...

There have been several posts on HN in my recollection about the building of highways in urban areas in the USA over the objections of local residents, it's just if they are poor or minorities they historically do not have the political power to stop these projects, and the private sector makes a bundle, which is the recipe for a lot of things that go wrong in the USA.

Here's one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9561895

There's a whole sector of articles about how racism fueled the highway boom in American cities, when those people affected had lot less right to vote. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-of-... It's still happening https://apnews.com/article/environment-houston-pollution-71c... But the average HN reader probably does not live in such a neighborhood nor know anyone who does.

Exept that in reality the US bulldosed cities as agrssivly as China and still does many idiotic projects. The reason it doesnt happen as often today is that less is invest and the lesser amount that is invested doesnt go as far as it did before.

The differnece today in the US is not that they dont bulldoze its that before they bulldoze there is years of political battle.

I follow various groups around the US that try to fight highway expansions and the almost always lose in the end.

So there really isnt much moral high ground here.