[sustran] THE LIFE AND DEATH OF URBAN HIGHWAYS

[Vinay Baindur]

FYI APOLOGIES FOR CROSS  posting

https://www.itdp.org/the-life-and-death-of-urban-highways/


The Life and Death of Urban Highways

March 13, 2012
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Source: ITDP



>From the 1940s to the 1960s, U.S. cities lost population and economic
investment to suburban locations. To compete, many cities built urban
highways, hoping to offer motorists the same amenities they enjoyed in the
suburbs. Whatever their benefits, these highways often had adverse impacts
on urban communities. Many cities in Latin America, following the Unites
States’ lead, also began building urban highways in the 1950s and 1960s,
and in China and India, recent urban highway construction is even more
dramatic.

These new roads carry a significant amount of traffic and contribute to
economic growth, but they also blight large sections of cities, threaten
historic urban neighborhoods, and concentrate air pollution in highly
populated areas, threatening people’s health and causing other problems. In
the past fifty years, tens of thousands of miles of urban highways were
built around the world. Many are now approaching functional obsolescence.
This is leading many cities, not just in the United States, to question the
place of major highways in urban areas and whether they merit further
investment or should be removed. Today, some of the same urban highways
that were built in that period are being torn down, buried at great
expense, or changed into boulevards. As cities around the world grapple
with congestion, growth, and decline, some, as seen in the following case
studies, illuminate what can be done when a highway no longer makes sense.

*In light of the fact that so many cities in developed countries are now
tearing out urban highways, it is time to re-appraise the specific
conditions under which it makes sense to build a new urban highway and when
it makes sense to tear one down.*