Urban freeway removal is one of the most consequential and quietly exciting movements reshaping North American cities today. As many urban freeways pass the 50-year mark and reach the end of their useful lives, cities across the country are choosing to replace rather than rebuild them. The result is neighborhoods being stitched back together after decades of division.
The 2022 Federal infrastructure bill included $1 billion in reconnecting communities funding specifically to support urban freeway removal and highway capping projects. That investment signals a national recognition of what many cities already know: the urban freeway removal movement is not just about roads. It is about repairing the damage that 20th-century highway building did to the communities it cut through. We explore this throughout the Saving the City documentary series about how to make cities better places.
We recently posted a new preview video about one of the most remarkable urban freeway removal stories in American history. In Philadelphia, a group of artists and community leaders, both White and Black, came together during the 1960s and 70s to stop the proposed Crosstown Expressway, a highway that would have demolished South Street and the neighborhoods around it.
Their success at blocking the Philadelphia Crosstown Expressway allowed South Street to transform instead into one of the city’s most vibrant shopping and dining corridors, sparked by an arts explosion that drew national attention. It is a story about what reconnecting communities looks like when residents refuse to let a freeway divide them.
Philadelphia’s story is part of a much larger movement. San Francisco replaced part of its Central Freeway with Octavia Boulevard. Seattle demolished the Alaskan Viaduct to open up its waterfront. Rochester gained hundreds of new housing units where the sunken Inner Loop East once separated downtown from close-in neighborhoods. The urban freeway removal movement is now active in Detroit, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Buffalo, Syracuse, and Portland, among others.
Decking over freeways with parks is another approach, turning infrastructure liabilities into public assets. Saving the City is documenting these projects as part of its broader look at how cities are using urban revitalization to repair the mistakes of the past.
Meet Rick and Ruth Snyderman, pioneering gallery owners on Philadelphia’s South Street, on what the neighborhood looked like before and after the Crosstown Expressway was stopped. Watch more videos.
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