The era of urban freeway building seems to be coming to an end - the interstate system is complete and the idea of uprooting historic inner-city neighborhoods to provide right-of-way is no longer politically tenable. Although some new urban freeways are being and no doubt will continue to be built, the nation’s highway policy is beginning to shift away from new construction and towards the main-tenance of existing highways. As the unsightly and divisive ribbons of concrete that crisscross the nation’s urban areas fall into disrepair and are rebuilt as the interstate system reaches the end of its design life and requires reconstruction, new opportunities for making urban highways less intrusive and more aesthetically appealing arise.
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| Although the nation’s highway policy seems to be shifting away from new freeway construction, new urban freeways are still being built. above: proposed extension of I-49 through downtown Lafayette, Louisiana. (photo by author) | above: Texas Spur 5, a new freeway near the University of Houston in Houston, Texas. This freeway, which is planned to eventually extend to Pearland and Alvin, has been on the drawing board since the 1960s. Construction of the first segment occurred in the late 1990s. (photo by author) |
There is still much work to be done and many challenges to overcome, but there can be no doubt that awareness of the importance of visual quality along freeways is increasing. Recent highway legislation seems to indicate that the federal government, almost thirty years after realizing the importance of aesthetic and environmental factors in highway construction, is finally beginning to emphasize the virtues of highway design which is more than merely utilitarian and which is sensitive to its surroundings. The increased flexibility and specific funding structures of ISTEA and TEA-21 are a big step forward in that regard. Furthermore, the National Highway System Act, passed by Congress in 1995, states that designs for new construction or reconstruction along NHS corridors ought to take into account issues besides safety, durability and economy such as “the constructed and natural environment of the area” and “the environmental, scenic, aesthetic, historic, community and preservation impacts of the activity” (FHWA 1997: vi). Noting that AASHTO’s ubiquitous Geometric Design of Highways and Streets (the “Green Book” which defines geometric standards for highways) is a series of guidelines but not a design manual, the FHWA publication Excellence in Highway Design states:
This guide encourages highway designers to expand their consideration in applying the Green Book criteria... This Guide should be viewed as a useful tool to help highway designers, environmentalists, and the public move further along the path to sensitively designed highways and streets by identifying some possible approaches that fully consider aesthetic, historic, and scenic values, along with safety and mobility. (FHWA 1997: vii)
Indeed, a new way of thinking about freeways appears to be looming on the horizon.
Over the past several decades, the freeway has become a permanent and significant part of America’s urban fabric. It is up to the transportation departments and highway designers of today and of the future to be sensitive to this fact and to think more about the design of freeways than simply the design speed, its peak-hour level of service, or its cost per square mile. After all, and as the history of the typical postwar inner city can attest, the freeway affects more than just traffic patterns and costs more than just land, materials and labor. The cities of today deserve more of these linear monoliths than merely utilitarian gray concrete; they deserve thought-fully designed sculptures that celebrate the city, technology, the experience of motion and, most importantly, the people who use and live near the freeway. Lawrence Halprin writes:
When freeways have failed, it has been because their designers have ignored their form-giving potentials and their inherent qualities as works of art in the city. They have been thought of only as traffic carriers but, in fact, they are a new form of urban sculpture for motion. To fulfill this aim freeways must be designed by people with sensitivity not only to structure but also to the environment; to the effect of freeways on the form of the city; and to the choreography of motion. (Halprin 1966: 5)