‘Urban highways and the reluctant public realm’

written by Jacqueline Tatom,
in [2006] The Landscape Urbanism Reader, Charles Waldheim editor , pp.179-195.

short summary

The article explores the design of highways as landscape urbanism opportunity, looking at specific cases throughout history integrating landscape architecture, civil engineering and architecture. Today tendency seems to propose concrete and asphalt ‘downstairs’ circulation domain of civil engineers and public open ‘upstairs’ plazas and streets designed by architects and planners. Highways are public spaces representing an urbanistic opportunity of public realm places design, combining architecture and landscape, moving ‘from utility to amenity, from infrastructure to urbanism’. The author points out the need of reviewing the canonical urban road system design, describing cases of coexistence of efficient circulation and creation of public places for modern life.

The four cases considered the Parisian boulevards, the Boston parkways, New York’s Hudson parkway and the Barcelona Cinturón share the common attempt of complex urban renovation, redressing degraded sanitary conditions and improving the quality of life. These projects have all a heterogeneous program of improvements, including cultural facilities and public spaces.

The Boulevards of Paris are deeply imbedded in the urban fabric conceived as three-dimensional public spaces for vehicular and pedestrian, commerce and leisure. The programmatic heterogeneity enriches the experience of the city.

Designed by Olmsted with his partner Eliot, the Emerald Necklace of Boston, turned a wasted swampy area into an urbanistic opportunity, on one hand, managing the hydrological problems of the Charles River of storm water and sewer overflows, and on the other hand, fulfilling circulation and recreational needs. As the Parisian boulevard, this project operates at local and metropolitan scale, addressing particular and comprehensive scopes, answering infrastructural needs and providing public spaces. Infrastructure and nature are co-partner into the place-making process for people to be.

The Hudson parkway designed by Robert Moses and completed in 1937 blends landscape, infrastructure and urbanization. The multifunctional program involved upgrading transportation, sanitizing creeks and rivers, creating parks and cultural amenities. Within this urban landscape the tranquillity of strolls coexist with the vehicular rush, this juxtaposition of different experience characterizes the urban life.

As the precious cases the Barcelona Cinturón realised between the 80s and 90s is a metropolitan element aiming to provide private and public transportation and public amenities and complementing the inner-city road network and the citywide system of parks and plazas. This project is characterized by a rich program and deals with difficult topographic conditions. The leftover of the highways are turned into housing and public facilities areas, creating a thick urban edge. The parks and recreational areas included in the design become even more articulate where the highway aligns with the waterfront, in Moll de la Fusta.

These projects are important reference of the shifting of highways design from utility to urbanism, from liability to opportunity. As Prof. Tatom wrote, ‘the design of urban highways can then truly be conceived as the design of public realm’.