LOCALISM | Southern Cities Must Remove Their Urban Freeways
Where interstates ruined neighborhoods, they also prevent the best new placemaking opportunities
Written By Satchel Walton
In my time growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, I was something of a prodigious pedestrian. But in the middle of the otherwise pleasant trip from my school to home that I walked about three times a week, I would have to pass under I-65, which carries six lanes of traffic that could be going from Chicago to Alabama. My house was built in the age of the streetcar. My school was in the largest neighborhood of Victorian-style homes in the country. And yet, the urban fabric and life between them has since been ripped apart by the interstate.
In the decades after the Second World War, old urban neighborhoods across the country lost population to new suburbs. Interstates were rammed through cities, destroying entire neighborhoods. President Eisenhower, who signed the Interstate and Highways Act of 1956, only expected them to run between and not through cities, but over 475,000 households were eventually displaced by interstate construction. Most of these were in urban areas, often in Black or poor neighborhoods.
Today, these interstates continue to physically divide communities, decrease walkability, and increase air and noise pollution in cities. The good news is, there is a movement to remove urban interstates. But it has mostly been effective in the North. According to the Congress for New Urbanism, eleven freeway removal projects have been completed in the U.S., but only one (in Chattanooga) was in the South (The South, by the Census Bureau’s definition, now has over 38 percent of the American population—the largest of the four regions). Seven of its thirty-two campaigns to remove currently existing freeways are in the South.
Freeway removal projects have been completed in:
Boston, Chattanooga, Milwaukee, New York City, Oakland, Portland (OR), Providence, Rochester, San Francisco (2), Seattle
The Congress for the New Urbanism lists campaigns in:
Akron, Austin, Buffalo (3), Dallas, Detroit, Denver, Duluth, Minnesota, Hartford (CT), Kansas City (MO), Long Beach (CA) (2), Louisville, Miami, New Haven (CT), New Orleans, New York City, Niagara Falls, Oakland, Pasadena (CA), Portland (OR), Rochester, Seattle, San Francisco (2), Somerville (MA), St. Louis, Syracuse, Tampa, Trenton (NJ), Tulsa
Southern cities could be disheartened by these figures, or we could use them to ignite change. When urban freeways are removed, there are near-limitless options for their replacements: urban green space, affordable housing, space for businesses. What’s more, selling off some of the public right of way can create a windfall for local governments. No matter the audience, the appeal of these projects is clear.
One freeway removal campaign is being waged in my hometown of Louisville. It advocates removing I-64, which cuts off the city’s downtown from the Ohio River. In 2006, the group 8664 advocated to remove the part of 64 along the river during the long Ohio River Bridges Project. The group proposed a boulevard and parks connecting the city to the river, but their plan was rejected and instead two new toll bridges and a new stretch of interstate were constructed.
The need for removal is just as acute today. Over the summer, I had a job that involved walking around Downtown Louisville for hours every weekday for four weeks. Even when I was only a few hundred feet from the mile-wide river, I could never see it—only interstate. To walk to my grandparents’ house, I would have to navigate over I-64, including traffic from St. Louis bound for Virginia.
Another potential site of urban freeway removal is in North Carolina, where the Durham Freeway cuts through the center of the city. As it was constructed, urban renewal displaced over 500 businesses and 4,000 families in the Hayti neighborhood alone. Now, replacing it with a boulevard could add nearly thirty-six acres of usable land. Developers recently bought a ten-acre plot just south of the freeway for $62.5 million. Not all of the land created by a freeway removal would be as valuable as that plot near Downtown Durham. Still, the sale of the land currently occupied by freeway would certainly be a boost for the city’s coffers, even before considering the tax revenue that would be generated by new businesses and residents on the reclaimed land.
Ironically, one factor that has made the plans in Louisville and Durham viable is the construction of other interstates. Moving forward, urban freeways could be removed and through traffic could be rerouted around the cities.
Satchel Walton served as the Mencken Publishing Fellow on Urban Development.