Like most American cities, Cincinnati’s downtown is defined by a tangle of highways. In the 1960s, Interstate 75 was built through the West End neighborhood northwest of downtown; the highway — and the massive urban renewal project that accompanied it — wiped out 3,700 buildings and displaced more than 25,000 people, most of whom were Black.

In early 2022, when Matt Butler learned about a $3.6 billion plan to widen I-75 through the West End, he thought: No way.