Thoughts on Highways and Urban Planning

Given the Northwest Arkansas road additions and road funding debate in Arkansas, as well as the general growth discussions taking place, I think these articles make some excellent points for planners to consider:

Cities generate wealth by bringing large numbers of people into proximity with one another. Two adjacent high-density neighborhoods will be richer than either could be alone because businesses at the edge of each neighborhood will be enriched by pedestrian traffic from the other. Driving a freeway through the middle of a healthy urban neighborhood not only destroys thousands of homes, it rips apart tightly integrated neighborhoods. Pedestrians rarely walk across freeways, so businesses near a new freeway are immediately deprived of half their customers. Similarly, residents near a new freeway lose access to half the businesses near them. The area along the freeway becomes what Jacobs calls a “border vaccuum” and goes into a kind of death spiral: because it contains little pedestrian traffic, businesses there don’t succeed. And because there are no interesting businesses there, even fewer people go there, which hurts the sales of businesses further from the freeway. The harms from such a freeway extends for blocks on either side.

http://www.walkablestreets.com/conservative.htm

http://timothyblee.com/2010/07/22/the-anti-urban-20th-century/

http://trueslant.com/erikkain/2010/07/22/freeways-and-the-death-of-the-great-american-city/

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/03/10/sprawling-misconceptions/