Streetsblog

Repairing the Neighborhood Scars Created By a Freeway

There is no more potent neighborhood destroyer than a massive highway. But for many urban places around the country, their horizons were fixed by a freeway long ago.

By Angie Schmitt

11:16 AM EST on January 22, 2013

There is no more potent neighborhood destroyer than a massive highway. But for many urban places around the country, their horizons were fixed by a freeway long ago.

Minneapolis’s Cedar-Riverside neighborhood is sort of a classic example, says Adam Froehlig at Network blog Streets.mn:

Built in the early 1970s on the east side of downtown Minneapolis, I-35W creates a gap between Downtown East and the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. The 3rd St/4th St trench, built at the same time as I-35W to facilitate traffic from I-35W and downtown to the University of Minnesota campus, further complicates local connectivity, resulting in Washington Ave being the only local connection between Cedar-Riverside and downtown.

That doesn’t mean cities have to live with past mistakes. Froehlig has mapped out a way for Minneapolis to fill in parts of the freeway trench, deck over the highway, replace complicated access ramps with less invasive options, and restore the street grid:

Angie Schmitt

Angie is a Cleveland-based writer with a background in planning and newspaper reporting. She has been writing about cities for Streetsblog for six years.

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