Wrong Side Of The Tracks: Transportation Systems And Exclusionary Urban Planning In Tucson

Abstract

Tracks for the Southern Pacific railroad through Tucson were completed in 1880, and solidified segregation housing patterns and the political and economic dispossession of Tucson’s minority communities. This thesis argues that growing numbers of Anglo settlers of Tucson used the placement of the railroad tracks as a form of urban planning to separate themselves from Tucson’s barrio. While the barrio tended to be predominantly Mexican in demographic composition, this thesis also calls for a deeper look into barrio life. It examines the ways in which exclusionary urban planning brought on by the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks effected Native, black, and Chinese Tucsonans. Vignettes of both prominent and understudied Tucsonans are interwoven with details about community development and railroad construction to draw connections between people’s lived experience and the movements of local, state, federal, and colonial governments. Ultimately, the placement of the railroad tracks would act as the ceiling for Mexican Tucson’s development and would legitimize continued dispossession of Tucson’s minority communities.