Even as new highways -- freeways and toll roads -- go up, others come down or are converted. Many remnants of Route 66 remain, for instance, as byways; and just as the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy has given new life to former rail lines, so, too, Highways to Boulevards advocates for refashioning former elevated highways and sunken freeways that (historically) disrupted or destroyed neighborhood cohesion into street level boulevards. In the USA, projects have included such conversions in cities as far-flung as Seattle and St. Louis, Chattanooga and Detroit.
It's going to be a long haul with the roadways. Can you imagine how they'll operate in a hundred years?
Let's not forget sidewalks -- a highly civilized, socializing idea that went by the wayside in some developments, especially in outer suburbs and exurbs, for some unenlightened period of time. I've walked on sidewalks in places I've lived just about anywhere they can be found, particularly in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina. Or stayed a while: throughout Europe, Manhattan, and just about anywhere else that recognizes the importance of social walking spaces.
Today's Rune: Signals.
3 comments:
Yeah it was GREAT urban planning in Detroit to tear out at least 5 ethnic neighborhoods for the interstates.
That worked real well for civilization
Highways like 66 sometimes become the equivalent of oxbow lakes, a piece is cut off from the mainstream and slowly siltifies.
Erik- I am old skool and still love looking at maps and how the highway systems work. I love all roads that run along the lake or ocean.
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