Posted by It’s a story we hear often in urban planning: tear down a highway, and traffic will descend into chaos. The sky will fall, commuters will riot, and the city will grind to a halt. But what if I told you that sometimes, the most radical act of destruction can actually lead to rebirth, not just for a neighborhood, but for the very flow of a city?
This isn’t some utopian fantasy; it’s the very real, very tangible transformation that happened on the west side of Manhattan. For decades, the West Side Highway, a colossal elevated structure, served as a concrete barrier between the vibrant city and its magnificent waterfront. It was a testament to a bygone era of car-centric planning, a symbol of efficiency that, in reality, choked off potential and fostered an environment of noise and pollution.
Then, a funny thing happened. Or rather, a series of things: a partial collapse in the 1970s, followed by years of debate, and finally, the slow, deliberate dismantling of this concrete behemoth. The urban planners of the day, those brave souls willing to challenge conventional wisdom, dared to ask: what if we didn’t replace it with another highway? What if we replaced it with parkland?
The naysayers screamed. They warned of gridlock that would make rush hour look like a leisurely stroll. But here’s the beautiful irony: the very phenomenon of induced demand, so often used to justify more asphalt, actually worked in reverse.
When the highway came down, and in its place arose the glorious Hudson River Park, something remarkable happened. The predicted traffic apocalypse never materialized. Instead, something far more subtle and profound occurred: the traffic, quite simply, disappeared.
This is a prime example of what happens when you remove a perceived “need” for something. The West Side Highway, in its very existence, induced people to drive on it. It created a direct, albeit ugly, route, and people used it. When that route was removed, a significant portion of that traffic didn’t just relocate to other streets, creating new bottlenecks. Instead, people adapted. Some found alternative transportation – bikes, subways, walking. Some changed their travel patterns, maybe even their habits. The demand for that specific highway route was, in effect, un-induced.
The transformation of the West Side Highway is nothing short of miraculous, and yet a miracle we have seen replicated again and again across the country. Where there was once a roaring river of steel and exhaust, there is now a tranquil ribbon of green, a place for recreation, contemplation, and community.
This example is echoed in Rochester’s Inner Loop Infill. It drives the progressive vision that has led to the I-81 plan in downtown Syracuse, New York, in which an urban highway will be demolished and re-imagined as part of the street grid. The West Side Highway experiment has had ripple effects that are beginning to positively impact the re-knitting of communities that were torn apart by excessive automobile infrastructure.
None of these projects that positively benefit the livability of our cities, neighborhoods and communities happens without your knowledge, support and understanding that when we remove car-centric infrastructure and replace it with elements of the human scale, good things happen. The West Side Highway example is one that can serve as evidence for all of our communities that highway removable and substantive repurposing benefits our communities and is better and healthier for us all.