Capping freeways to undo harms of 1960s freeway bing

Parks connecting neighborhoods

Jay Blazek Crossley, Nov 09, 11.

Cities across the nation are considering capping sunken freeways with parks to reconnect neighborhoods that were disconnected during the freeway building boom of the 1950s and 60s, according to Architectural Record.

While many projects are now remaining in conceptual phase in the current economic situation, the success of such a cap in Columbus, OH, has statewide officials looking to replicate the project or simply build new freeways in ways that allows future caps:

The cap is so successful that it has changed people’s expectations here for highway bridges. The Ohio Department of Transportation’s plans for a new highway project here include at least one highway bridge with a cap-style treatment. Other bridges will have foundations that allow caps to be built in the future.

Could Chicago and other cities do something comparable? A case study by a real estate developers group, the Washington-based Urban Land Institute, said the cap shows that the following ingredients are necessary: an active road reconstruction project, well-organized citizens, an eager developer, a city government that makes the project a priority and a strong retail environment.

No matter how replicable a model it turns out to be, the Cap at Union Station expands our ideas of what freeway lids can be. Even parks over freeways could benefit from the presence of restaurants and shops, in the view of developer Lucks.

“You need people having coffee, having a cocktail, a real city,” he said. That’s better, he added, than a park where people are blasted by “freeway noise with 5 million decibels.”

(Image Credit: imelda - flickr / creative commons license)