Posted by I’ll be quick… my home city of Rochester has had a bit of a tough week, with key business closings and a dead-last jobs ranking by the WSJ.
The above image, however, is something we to feel good about. Or rather, the removal of a key piece of this image is something we should feel good about. If you haven’t been following, Rochester made the choice years ago to “fill in” the eastern portion of The Inner Loop, an underutilized downtown expressway that was in need of maintenance. For half the money it would have taken to repair it, the city decided to fill it in, creating a tremendous amount of development-ready space where there was none before. See all that concrete above? Well, Google Maps just updated their satellite view below (thanks to Nicholas Russo for the heads up on this!) and the change is pretty drastic.
Note the hundreds of thousands of now usable square feet of urban space. This sort of Urban Renewal reversal will house a big piece of Rochester’s future.
And what’s that? A bike track? Yeah. Rochester added an amazing piece of bike infrastructure in the anticipation of the development we are about to see in this area.
OK enough with the Google Maps satellite images. Let’s look at what’s really happening on the ground.
All along this former highway, the wheels of tomorrow’s Rochester are turning. Every square inch of the former underused right of way is being tossed and turned, built upon and activated.
Just like our own lives, there will periods of time when we feel our cities are being hit hard. When this happens, let’s look to those projects, those success stories, those unique positives that we all need to weather the storm. It’s a long journey everyone, let’s keep looking forward.