Top 10 urban highways that deserve to be torn down
Urbanist policies are often thought of in the positive: building bike lanes, light-rail lines, pedestrian plazas, and mixed-use developments. But the suburban sprawl that swept across our landscape left a lot of detritus, so urbanists also have to focus on getting rid of the negative — in many cases, this means highways.
It’s no coincidence that the watershed moment in American urbanism wasn’t the initiation of a new urbanist project. Rather, Jane Jacobs rallied her Greenwich Village neighbors to stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway from ever being built. Other cities that abandoned their most ill-conceived highway plans in the face of community resistance, like Vancouver and San Francisco, are noted today for their high quality of life and low carbon footprint.
But in much of North America, limited-access highways tore through downtowns and surrounding urban neighborhoods. Designed to bring suburban drivers into and through inner cities, these elevated behemoths consumed everything in their paths and cast shadows over what was left. They separated residents from their communities, waterfronts, and public amenities. Now, as they age, it has come time for cities to determine what to do with them: rebuild, replace, or tear down.
Every year, the Congress for a New Urbanism issues a report, “Freeways Without Futures,” that lists highways deserving of demolition. In its recently released 2014 edition, the group writes: “CNU advocates for replacing urban freeways with surface streets, boulevards and avenues as the most cost-effective, sustainable option for cities grappling with aging grade separated roads. This has the added benefit of providing significant opportunities to heal local street networks and improve regional traffic dispersion.”
“Freeways without futures”
- I-10/Claiborne Overpass, New Orleans
- Route 5/Skyway, Buffalo
- I-81, Syracuse
- Gardiner Expressway, Toronto
- Inner Loop, Rochester
- I-70, St. Louis
- I-280, San Francisco
- I-375, Detroit
- Terminal Island Freeway, Long Beach
- Aetna Viaduct, Hartford
“Campaigns to watch”
- I-345, Dallas
- I-894/Sheridan Expressway, Bronx, New York City
- I-710 Extension, Alhambra and Pasadena
- NYS Route 198/Scajaquada Expressway, Buffalo
- Robert Moses Parkway, Niagara Falls