Uncovering the Truth about the Montgomery Peacock Tract
Channel: Aubrey Sanders
Date: 2023-04-10

In 1850 the Montgomery, Alabama Peacock Tract was a slave plantation. By its height circa 1950, the Peacock Tract neighborhood was the African American commercial and cultural heart that powered the Civil Rights Movement. Racially motivated state and federal funded urban development projects systematically hollowed out the neighborhood’s vital social infrastructure, leading to a total collapse of economic opportunities. Property values, incomes, and accessibility to walkable labor markets, goods and services have fallen well below their midcentury height, and remain significantly worse off than the adjacent Cloverdale neighborhood. The Peacock Tract is a shell of its former self searching for new life, whilst curbing threats of gentrification and razing of its many historical landmarks. Using site collected data on environmental conditions and publicly available demographic and economic databases, regressions are generated to understand how urban design and accessibility to social infrastructure over time have impacted land values, urban microclimates, and welfare outcomes for the neighborhood's residents.