nothin How To Unbuild A Highway | New Haven Independent

How To Unbuild A Highway

Paul Bass Photo

New Haven needed to fix a mistake from its last great stab at urban renewal, by filling in a mini-highway and building anew around it.

Matthew Nemerson (at right above) and Anstress Farwell (at left) agreed on that point. How to fix that mistake was another question.

The mini-highway in question is the Route 34 Connector, aka the Richard C. Lee Highway, a three-exit spur from I‑95 tahat the state built in 1959 as the first leg of a planned 10-mile expressway that was never completed.

New Haven has gradually been filling in that highway as part of the Downtown Crossing” project. The stated hope is to spur new development, welcome pedestrians and cyclists back to downtown streets, and stitch the neighborhood back to the Hill. (Click here and here to read some about that.)

Nemerson, New Haven government’s economic development administrator, said the city has been successful in doing all that, beginning with the construction of a 13-story office building for Alexion Pharmaceuticals at 100 College St.

Farwell, a preservationist who runs the Urban Design League, said the city has ended up repeating mistakes of the past by continuing to gear development to the needs of car drivers.

They offered those divergent views in a passionate 59-minute discussion on WNHH radio’s Dateline New Haven.”

In the process they touched on broader questions about urban development, such as:

• How do you create a functional transit system here geared to not just drivers, but to cyclists, pedestrians, and train and bus riders?
• Does New Haven have the population, or potential population, to support a system on the scale of Boston’s?
• Would increased reliance on shuttles from train stations to big employment centers fill in needed gaps, or continue decimating public transit by privatizing commutes?
• Do you attract employers best by building some parking garages for those commuters who will always drive? Or can you attract them best by forgoing garages and developing a more robust transit system that offers alternatives to driving?

Click on the sound file above to hear the debate. The first 30 minutes cover the 1950s and 1960s urban renewal era and the creation of the mini-highway. Then (you can skip ahead if you prefer) the discussion turns to the present, and heats up.

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