Ann Arbor got it right. Don't plow a freeway through your historic areas. They avoided that impulse and, lo and behold, cars still find their way to U of M and the downtown just fine.
I think if you could erase 496 ever happening and magically move MSU a little closer to the capitol, Lansing would be doing noticeably better. We just made the wrong bets and are paying for it now.
We thought convenient freeway access would bring shoppers downtown. Wrong. We thought situating MSU away from the capitol, making it a rural campus (at that time), would add to its appeal. Wrong.
These aren't insurmountable problems but I do believe that it's slowed down the recovery of the city's historic areas.
BTW - I don't think I've ever seen any pictures of main street before its demolition. Could someone post a few pics, esp. from the stretch between MLK and cedar/larch? I'd also be interested in learning more about the history of that area, and why the city decided to plow 496 through it.
The LSJ ran a feature story a couple years ago about the destruction that 496 caused and they had pictures of the neighborhoods prior to the freeway. I tried looking on Google for it but couldn't find it. The article should still be online somewhere.
I agree that it seems people don't want to cross freeways. They make one of the toughest "walls" that we could have in urban environments. I've used one of the parks that covers 696 in Oak Park and it's really nice. You actually can't tell that you're over a freeway, the only odd thing being that it's devoid of buildings nearby.
I think if a combined park and row of businesses were built over a sunken freeway it could work really well to hide the freeway beneath it. Each time a bridge is replaced we could take the opportunity to widen it and add greenways and small shops on top.
Detroit is doing just that with the proposed new crossing of Woodward Avenue over the Fisher Freeway. They are going to widen the bridge 60 feet on each side and fill that new platform with shops and widened sidewalks.
I still think we're quite a few years from that. Downtown actually needs to fill in the south of downtown before I think the community even considers something like that. Some might say it'd spur demand, but it'd be really weird to have shops on a bridge...and then no retail on either side of it for blocks. The streetwall has to be built down from Lenawee (and the Deluxe Inn site filled in on the south) first before something like that would even really make sense.
I have not been all over Detroit, but I did notice that much of I-96 has been rebuilt recently [when?] and they have nicely landscaped the sides of the highway and around the overpasses. Our expressways would benefit from the same treatment.
The "Big Dig" in Boston is a great example of covering a highway with parklands. Here I could see building a greenway over the depressed part of 496, maybe with developments at some of the major street crossings. It could be just a beautiful urban park that re-connects the north and south of the city. Developments could be spurred along parts of St. Joe.and to the north into downtown also Malcome X to the south and west with no buildings on the greenway. Since they built it in Boston the land next to the Rose Kenndy Greenway has become very desirable, the locals and tourist love and use the greenway. I used to really like the fresh air you find once you get down there, it smells like grass flowers and the ocean. Just dreaming but these things are not imposable.
Thanks for the tips on Main Street - I'll see what I can dig up.
I agree that a sunken freeway would be perfect for spanning 496. Ideally it would run from ~Cherry Street to Walnut, but even an expanded Washington Ave. bridge would make a big difference.
Looks like the article was called or "A Complicated Legacy: I-496 Slashed through Key Black Neighborhood in the '60s" or "Looking back: I-496 construction complicated legacy". Wikipedia has a link to an archived version of the first page of the article. I can't find the rest of the article.
Detroit is a long ways from actually expanding Woodward over the Fisher Freeway. It looks like another attempt by the Illitches to promise the moon so they can get more tax credits. There's still acres of surface parking (thanks to the Illitches) so the demand for building on top of the Fisher isnt there yet.
Well, no. This is more likely to happen because they are developing immediately around the area (high-rises, in fact). It's part of the development of District Detroit. There are some part of the plan that are just visions and far off; this isn't one of them. While other parts of the vision have changed, this has not be taken out of the plans. I keep on top of this stuff pretty closely.
They've already done more with District Detroit than they did when they developed Foxtown around Comerica Park; a lot of this is because the company is now being led by the son since the father died. I've been pretty skeptical of them in the past, but this is a different generation. While everything has gone completely smooth with District Detroit, they've already surpassed what folks thought they were going to do.
What is happening in Detroit is really amazing when you think about what it looked like in recent history. The Detroit District and arena look great on TV. I look at the Curbed Detroit page often. I wish the wealth was spreading out into the vast neighborhoods and city provided services like police and fire protection would be restored because of the new developments. There is still a great deal of poverty in Detroit.
Detroit's big problem is that it has way too many neighborhoods that don't generate much tax revenue. Big commercial roads like Gratiot and Grand River are mostly inactive and in need of serious redevelopment, not to mention other commercial streets like Fenkell or Mack. The neighborhood industrial districts are usually abandoned, and half of the nearby houses are often gone or in a ruined state.
Some wealth will radiate outward from the core, but there's just so much work to be done. You have to basically remake what was a top five American city. I feel like we won't see Detroit as a whole function like a normal American city until I'm a very old man.
Comments
Ann Arbor got it right. Don't plow a freeway through your historic areas. They avoided that impulse and, lo and behold, cars still find their way to U of M and the downtown just fine.
I think if you could erase 496 ever happening and magically move MSU a little closer to the capitol, Lansing would be doing noticeably better. We just made the wrong bets and are paying for it now.
We thought convenient freeway access would bring shoppers downtown. Wrong. We thought situating MSU away from the capitol, making it a rural campus (at that time), would add to its appeal. Wrong.
These aren't insurmountable problems but I do believe that it's slowed down the recovery of the city's historic areas.
The LSJ ran a feature story a couple years ago about the destruction that 496 caused and they had pictures of the neighborhoods prior to the freeway. I tried looking on Google for it but couldn't find it. The article should still be online somewhere.
I agree that it seems people don't want to cross freeways. They make one of the toughest "walls" that we could have in urban environments. I've used one of the parks that covers 696 in Oak Park and it's really nice. You actually can't tell that you're over a freeway, the only odd thing being that it's devoid of buildings nearby.
I think if a combined park and row of businesses were built over a sunken freeway it could work really well to hide the freeway beneath it. Each time a bridge is replaced we could take the opportunity to widen it and add greenways and small shops on top.
Detroit is doing just that with the proposed new crossing of Woodward Avenue over the Fisher Freeway. They are going to widen the bridge 60 feet on each side and fill that new platform with shops and widened sidewalks.
I still think we're quite a few years from that. Downtown actually needs to fill in the south of downtown before I think the community even considers something like that. Some might say it'd spur demand, but it'd be really weird to have shops on a bridge...and then no retail on either side of it for blocks. The streetwall has to be built down from Lenawee (and the Deluxe Inn site filled in on the south) first before something like that would even really make sense.
I have not been all over Detroit, but I did notice that much of I-96 has been rebuilt recently [when?] and they have nicely landscaped the sides of the highway and around the overpasses. Our expressways would benefit from the same treatment.
The "Big Dig" in Boston is a great example of covering a highway with parklands. Here I could see building a greenway over the depressed part of 496, maybe with developments at some of the major street crossings. It could be just a beautiful urban park that re-connects the north and south of the city. Developments could be spurred along parts of St. Joe.and to the north into downtown also Malcome X to the south and west with no buildings on the greenway. Since they built it in Boston the land next to the Rose Kenndy Greenway has become very desirable, the locals and tourist love and use the greenway. I used to really like the fresh air you find once you get down there, it smells like grass flowers and the ocean. Just dreaming but these things are not imposable.
Thanks for the tips on Main Street - I'll see what I can dig up.
I agree that a sunken freeway would be perfect for spanning 496. Ideally it would run from ~Cherry Street to Walnut, but even an expanded Washington Ave. bridge would make a big difference.
Looks like the article was called or "A Complicated Legacy: I-496 Slashed through Key Black Neighborhood in the '60s" or "Looking back: I-496 construction complicated legacy". Wikipedia has a link to an archived version of the first page of the article. I can't find the rest of the article.
Detroit is a long ways from actually expanding Woodward over the Fisher Freeway. It looks like another attempt by the Illitches to promise the moon so they can get more tax credits. There's still acres of surface parking (thanks to the Illitches) so the demand for building on top of the Fisher isnt there yet.
Well, no. This is more likely to happen because they are developing immediately around the area (high-rises, in fact). It's part of the development of District Detroit. There are some part of the plan that are just visions and far off; this isn't one of them. While other parts of the vision have changed, this has not be taken out of the plans. I keep on top of this stuff pretty closely.
They've already done more with District Detroit than they did when they developed Foxtown around Comerica Park; a lot of this is because the company is now being led by the son since the father died. I've been pretty skeptical of them in the past, but this is a different generation. While everything has gone completely smooth with District Detroit, they've already surpassed what folks thought they were going to do.
What is happening in Detroit is really amazing when you think about what it looked like in recent history. The Detroit District and arena look great on TV. I look at the Curbed Detroit page often. I wish the wealth was spreading out into the vast neighborhoods and city provided services like police and fire protection would be restored because of the new developments. There is still a great deal of poverty in Detroit.
Detroit's big problem is that it has way too many neighborhoods that don't generate much tax revenue. Big commercial roads like Gratiot and Grand River are mostly inactive and in need of serious redevelopment, not to mention other commercial streets like Fenkell or Mack. The neighborhood industrial districts are usually abandoned, and half of the nearby houses are often gone or in a ruined state.
Some wealth will radiate outward from the core, but there's just so much work to be done. You have to basically remake what was a top five American city. I feel like we won't see Detroit as a whole function like a normal American city until I'm a very old man.