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Old Posted Apr 18, 2017, 3:39 PM
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In Defense of the Urban Freeway

In Defense of the Urban Freeway


APRIL 2016

BY WILLIAM FULTON



Read More: http://www.governing.com/columns/urb...n-freeway.html

Quote:
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We’re getting used to the idea that people want to live at the center of American cities, where they don’t have to rely as much on their cars and have ready access to culture, sports, food, entertainment and, yes, jobs. But one trend that’s been overlooked is the reverse commute. Many of the people who choose to live downtown actually work in the suburbs. And, ironically, it’s the much-maligned urban freeway system that makes this lifestyle possible.

- Urban freeways are often blamed for dividing and damaging urban neighborhoods, especially in poor and minority areas. There’s a growing movement to tear them down and replace them with surface streets. --- But our urban freeway systems are one of the drivers of today’s urban renaissance. They originally plowed through city neighborhoods to make it easy for suburban commuters to get to jobs in downtown areas. Now they make it easy for commuters to get out. And that’s helping fuel the downtown housing boom.

- In San Diego, for example, close to 50,000 people now live downtown, and that number is growing fast. But the number of people who work downtown is holding steady at around 60,000. There is even some concern that that number will decline as more jobs move to suburban job centers. It’s housing, not jobs, that’s driving downtown San Diego’s success. The same is true in other cities as well. If these housing markets had to depend on downtown job opportunities, there’d be much less construction.

- At the same time, these suburban job centers are becoming denser. Think of the Galleria, or Century City in Los Angeles, or Tysons Corner in Northern Virginia. Someday all these centers will likely not only be well served by freeways but by transit too. Tysons already is, Century City may soon have the “Subway to the Sea” and a potential light rail line to the Galleria is a perpetual topic of controversy in Houston. Until then, the freeways are a lifeline to and from downtowns.

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