The anonymous blogger who publishes the “Urban Richmond” blog loathes the four- and six-lane highways that slice through America’s cities. In this recent post, “Good Idea #1: Hide Your Highways,” he explores ideas for diminishing the disruption of highways on the urban fabric. Drawing examples from different cities, he proposes two solutions: (1) Elevate the highways and build underneath them, or (2) sink the highways so you can build over them.
Ambivalent Richmonder cites approvingly the practice in Columbus, Ohio, where the Ohio Department of Transportation hid an elevated highway by building retail shops underneath. From the street level, you can hardly tell there’s a highway at all — the shops are knitted into the urban fabric.
The author also cites the City of Richmond, where structures have been built over Interstate 195 through downtown. One is a parking deck and sidewalk that connects the twin Riverside towers to the rest of downtown; the other is the Kanawha Plaza, which does the same for the Federal Reserve Bank. Such structures are expensive, of course, so they can’t be built everywhere. But they do create economic value by preserving the integrity of the urban fabric.
Ambivalent Richmonder travels far and wide in his quest for good ideas for urban transportation and land use. Readers of this blog should add him to their bookmarks. (Hat tip to Jon Baliles for steering me to this website.)
