Page 290 - Beyond Decommissioning

Experience and lessons learned 271

highways into urban parks. One remarkable example is offered by the City of Yarra.
Yarra (near Melbourne, Australia) started in 2009 a Converting Roads to Parks pro-
gram in which gardens are generated by using existing traffic infrastructure, such as
council-owned parking lots and sections of roads. Open spaces are designed for flex-
ible use, such as to accommodate mini events and gatherings. Details of the project are
given in Landscape Architecture Australia (2015). More cases are summarized below
(Arch Daily, 2016).
One of the first highways in the US to be converted into a park was Portland’s Har-
bor. In 1974, the conversion gave rise to Tom McCall Park. The Hawthorne Bridge,
which was originally part of the freeway, became a bridge for cyclists and pedestrians,
connecting First Avenue with the park.
The Cheonggyecheon elevated highway in Seoul, South Korea was built on a canal
of the same name. To reduce environmental pollution and the noise generated by more
than 160,000 vehicles using the highway daily, the city launched a plan to demolish
the highway and replace it by a park. The project cleaned up the canal and returned the
site to a meeting place. The recovery of this public space has reduced noise and tem-
perature in the surroundings.
In the early 1980s in San Francisco, CA, a plan began to demolish the Pier Freeway
with the goal of building a park. However, it took until 1991 for the two-story motor-
way to be demolished—after being damaged by the 1989 earthquake. Studies con-
cluded that rebuilding the freeway was much more expensive than making a park.
In 2000, the Madrid Rı ´o project, Madrid, Spain, was started, which aimed to restore
the banks of the Manzares River. This was a difficult task due to the stretches of the
M-30 highway that crossed it. As there were several historic structures involved, like
the Puente de Segovia, the oldest bridge in the city, the Ermita Virgen del Puerto and
Puente del Rey, the project performed the restoration while preserving these tokens of
the city’s history. An addition benefit was that the Puerta del Rey, a building dating
back to the early 1800s, could return to its original location, from where it had been
displaced by the motorway. The park opened in 2011; in addition to sports and walks,
the park offers opportunities to learn about the city’s history. The motorway was not
completely demolished, but traffic was diverted by underground tunnels.
In the 1960s, a construction project at Milwaukee, WI would make the downtown
area surrounded by the Park East Freeway. However, local residents began to oppose
it, arguing that the project would cause too much noise. For this reason, the highway
was never completed and certain sections were demolished in 1999–2002 for the cre-
ation of the Park East Corridor. Once finished, this project allows free access from the
city center to the river. The new park is 60 ha, 24 of which were allocated to new build-
ings to regenerate the area.
In 2001, an earthquake damaged the overpass of the Alaska Freeway in Seattle,
WA. The initial plan was to rebuild the viaduct, however, it was later decided to make
a four lane underground tunnel in order to allow the surface areas along Elliot Bay join
with the rest of the city through a new pedestrian space.
The eastern section of Interstate 70, Baltimore, MD and the section of Interstate 95
inside the Washington D.C. Beltway are two road stubs resulting from the missing
connections with downtown roads. Both stubs are currently employed as incentive