Why America Is Tearing Down Its Highways

At the other extreme, check out "The Arctic City Where Everyone Cycles" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpnYkiqUmj0 □□

Building single family homes around the inner ring of a city just seems weird to me (as a European). To make truly alive and vibrant cities more mixed middle density is needed.

At 7:40 Tearing down a highway in the city centre to build single family homes seems like a waste of valuable space. Thos should be mid-rise blocks to give as many people as possible an opportunity own a space in the city close to work and services etc.

The funny thing is building more single family housing is what's driving the cost of property values to go up. If you want more affordable housing, you need to build denser buildings that are mixed use. You are only displacing yourself at that point, unfortunately.

rochesterian here! the old inner loop was a nightmare. those who were unfamiliar with it would often get “trapped” on it going around downtown four or five times. glad to see it’s now a lovely little walkable couple of blocks.

The thing is that it’s not just removing highways, that’s relatively easy. You’ll need densification (the kind that was rejected by Rochester), new mixed use developments, and the provision of adequate mass public transit to replace that demand for transportation. It’s so much more than taking down concrete

They want to get rid of these highways, but they also want single-family homes? Do they not want people to be able to get anywhere easily? If you want walkable areas, you can't zone for single-family homes. That just leads to sprawling suburbs and more traffic.

Rochester (my hometown) has more problems than you can shake a stick at. The entire downtown core is economically dead and has been for 30 years. Even fast food packed up and left decades ago. Crime is outrageous. Many gorgeous old buildings were demolished in the 1960's, replaced with ugly modern office towers that now sit mostly empty. The economic decline of the past 50 years has been shocking and there is really no end in sight.

If you're worried about current residents getting priced out, you have to build more housing. A lot, not just the little you can get from single-family homes. That said, props for tearing down the loop. A big step in the right direction regardless.

Basically a good idea to tear down highways, but... The proposed single-family housing is always bad for a metropolitan area. 4-6 stories high apartment buildings creating a population density high enough to make nearby stores, retail, restaurants, cinemas and more work (often placed on street level and the apartments above). You simply need smaller shops and restaurants nearby, so people actually walk instead of using their car. And if you have the "once in x generations" chance to rebuilt such a wide and long stretch in your city: Think ahead and built (or reserve space) for a light rail system :)

In downtown Boston we put the highway underground and turned where the highway was into green spaces. It makes it a much nicer place to live and visit.

Whenever visiting the USA, (Seattle springs to mind first) I can't help but admire their road system, just amazing, I've thought. The highway teardown in the USA has really opened my eyes to a social & suburban problem which hadn't occurred to me in my previous 3 visits. Im from a wee country with a 'piddly arsed' road system who'd rather hold up traffic for half an hour at a time with workers repairing previous poor road workmanship instead of providing our nation with a decent road system. Love the quality of US highways and the efficiency they provide Americans and visitors alike. A joy to drive. Thanks for pointing out the negative impacts these highways have had on American society. Made me stop and think.

Another example is Albany, New York. It was first settled in 1614 after Henry Hudson sailed up the river later named after him, where the Dutch claimed it and constructed Fort Nassau (which was eventually rebuilt due to a flood as Fort Orange). Access to that river was completely destroyed in the sixties by a highway system so complex, it was used in the movie Salt. Neighborhoods were destroyed for the highway and the state office complex. There's now a project that looks into replacing the highways with a boulevard, which will result in the same amount of acreage that was destroyed for the state office complex to be used for residential development, including low-income and mixed-use housing, and most importantly, once again provide access to the river for all to enjoy.

Affordable housing but they only want single family homes?? What a joke…

Not only USA, I've heard of similar ambitious projects in European countries like Belgium. Even my hometown in spain recently downgraded one of our main avenues from 3+3 traffic lanes to 1+1, turning the remaining ones into bus lanes, bike lanes and wider sidewalks. The age of urban motorways might have come to an end?

In NYC, they started to take down The West Side Highway, an elevated highway, almost 30 years ago. Today the area is more open to light and pedestrians. IMO, it worked out well.

As someone going for a masters in Urban and Regional Planning this fall, This is actually something that warms my heart, as this is something that I actually want to implement myself. Also, I wonder if in tearing down the old highway connections, we could use parts of this space to begin metro hubs, to help connect communities even more, and further improve the transit of each city, reducing the traffic even more. Easing the stress on the roads which might still be heavily used otherwise.

Making the development on the inner loop be single family homes may backfire for that. Maybe make them be condos that people can have ownership... making low density exclusive housing would probably just continue to leave many residents without the ability to build wealth and also burden these residents with the cost of maintaining an entire home. Not to mention it being continued car dependent development in a city that very much needs to get away from it.

Could you talk about any infrastructure in Australia if possible.

Off-side remark: There's something very cool about a classy British voice narrating this American story.