One of the best overarching solutions to this problem, of course, is increased funding for aesthetic enhancements. If the local, state and federal governments would recognize the aesthetic condition of the urban freeway as a legitimate quality-of-life issue and direct more funds towards its improvement, the problem of unsightly freeways that tear apart America’s cities could more easily be remedied. And, to be sure, initiatives such as the federal Enhancements program are aimed at achieving this end. However, funding is by its very nature scarce, and it is improbable that the issue of highway aesthetics will receive a great deal of attention in the face of more pressing transportation-related issues such as pollution and congestion. And, as was noted in an earlier chapter of this report, there is sometimes outright resistance to funding highway enhancements projects from government agencies, elected officials, or special interests.

However, freeway beautification efforts need not be funded simply for the sake of beauty; there is also an economic benefit involved. While an unsightly and unwelcome highway can hasten the deterioration of adjacent neighborhoods, the proper design of a freeway can turn a community eyesore into a community asset. This can have tangible economic benefits. It was calculated that a $3 million corridor beautification project along US 30 and I-476 in Radnor, Pennsylvania caused property values in the surrounding neighborhoods to rise, rather than to fall. A similar experience occurred in neighborhoods around a well-landscaped and carefully-designed section of I-35 East in St. Paul, Minnesota: the freeway actually added value to the community. William Morrish, the director of the Design Center for American Urban Landscape at the University of Minnesota, notes that “it costs more than a standard highway, but it’s going to be cheaper than bailing out a failing neighborhood.” It is also probable that well-designed highways will make road travel more appealing and attract tourism, thereby bolstering the economy. “Can state and federal governments afford to spend more on highway design and maintenance?” Philip Langdon asks. “Perhaps a better question is whether they can afford not to” (Langdon 1997: 26-35).

There is a solution to the issue of highway design that is even greater than funding. It is simply the idea of careful coordination in highway planning and design. As of now there is little cooperation or integration between the various disciplines involved in highwaybuilding. John Robinson writes about the lack of coordination between the various design professionals and the elements they design:

This fact becomes painfully obvious when we examine the various elements of our highways. Each is functionally designed, but rarely is there any visual or aesthetic relationship between them. Signs are designed by one group of experts, fences by another, bridges by another, and the route selected by still another. Later the landscape architect is called in to “beautify.” This is like turning over the design of a city hall to a bunch of subcontractors — one to do the windows, another the interiors, another the roof, and so on, with the gardener called in at the end to add some cosmetic flowers to the result (Robinson 1971: 106).

In the late 1960s, the Federal Government came to the same conclusion. The 1968 Freeway in the City publication stresses an interdisciplinary approach to highway freeway design (FHWA 1968: 18). A similar directive is repeated thirty years later in the 1997 FHWA Flexibility in Highway Design publication, which advocates the use of a multidisciplinary team of professionals early in the process of freeway design, noting that doing so can help in establishing a design “theme” for a freeway as well as determining the existing character of a corridor that must be preserved. “In this way, it is possible to avoid having to force-fit aesthetic treatments, such as landscape treatments, as ‘add-ons’ to the project to try to ‘pretty up’ a design that isn’t quite right of one that is unacceptable to the community” (FHWA 1997: 11).

So why, thirty years after policies encouraging a multidisciplinary team effort to freeway design first began to be prescribed, has very little changed? Certainly this has to do with factors relating to an apathetic attitude towards freeway aesthetics or a resistance to change from those charged with highway design and construction. But perhaps the biggest reason why the method of designing the nation’s freeways, and hence the design of the freeways themselves, is narrow and fragmented in scope and lacks innovation has to do with the way in which a freeway is regarded: why take an integrated, aesthetics-driven approach to designing a structure that merely carries traffic? This leads to the greatest and most important overall solution to the problem of the urban freeway: there needs to be a new way of thinking about the freeway itself.

For too long, engineers, planners and politicians have understood the freeway’s purpose only in technical or abstract terms: it is not meant to be aesthetic or to be given a personal or human touch. It is only meant to carry traffic and service cities. Never mind the fact that the very traffic it is meant to carry is created by and consists of people, or that the cities through which the freeways run exist because of and are inhabited by people. The freeway must not be designed for its own sake – it must be designed for the community’s sake. After all, the freeway is part of a city’s urban experience just as are its schools, museums, and civic spaces. A freeway, in fact, is quite literally a public space of its own; a typical urban limited access highway serves the needs of tens and thousands of people every day, people who, by proxy of their automobiles, interact with one another and experience the city from a common reference point. John Robinson writes:

A highway is a public structure, as is a city hall or county office building. If we have the right to demand good design in our public buildings, we should also demand it in our highways. We are not getting it” (Robinson, 1971: 106).

Under the current concept of the urban freeway, problems such as billboards or freeway noise are seen as problems in and of themselves, rather as symptoms of a much larger problem, and efforts to resolve those problems are narrow in focus. Instead of having ugly freeways that are disconnected from the surrounding urban landscape, these solutions create pretty freeways that are disconnected from the surrounding urban landscape. Freeways must be contemplated in their context and regarded as part of a larger whole. There must be a broad-minded, holistic and inclusive approach to their design and construction. This new way of thinking, moreover, must not be applied only to the design and construction of the freeway itself, but also to the maintenance and upkeep of the freeway as well.

Within this new conception of the freeway, moreover, there is no room for half-century-old justifications and rationalizations about freeway design. Everything must be reconsidered. If we are to design freeways that are truly pro-urban, then we need to question the underlying principles of the freeways themselves. Why should cost and traffic flow be the ultimate determinant in freeway design? Who or what is this freeway really meant to serve? Why build a freeway at all? Certainly, an examination of this type leads to even larger questions regarding the role of the automobile in modern society that are complicated and difficult to answer. But, if the nature of the urban freeway is to ever be changed in a meaningful way, they are questions that must at least be considered. It is not going to be easy; but it needs to be done. And it needs to start with those responsible for designing and maintaining the freeways. As Philip Langdon notes:

Transportation departments need to see their task as both enriching motorists’ experiences and enhancing neighborhoods’ well-being in addition to simply providing for traffic movement. Only when transportation planners take a more balanced approach will Americans’ time on the road become decidedly more enjoyable (Langdon 1997: 26-35).

The freeway cannot be designed in a vacuum. There needs to be a fundamental understanding of the freeway as part of something else.

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