A rendering shows the River Seine expressway converted to human public space.

The Mayor of Paris announced recently that the city is closing an expressway along the River Seine in a project that could have a major impact on public space in the city. Time magazine describes the current one-day-a-week closure and how this may spread to 365 days per year:

On a recent Sunday in Paris, stroller-pushing parents, rollerbladers and cyclists eased their way up and down an unusually tranquil stretch of the Seine’s left bank. Normally this road is filled with thousands of cars zipping along, but once a week it is transformed into an oasis of calm as part of an experiment by City Hall to see what happens when cars are banned from Paris’ riverbanks. So far the experiment, which has been going on for the past few years, is proving popular. Delphine Damourette, 31, a Montmarte resident whose cobblestoned neighborhood is a rollerblader’s hell, says the traffic-free Sundays give her a taste of her city as she most loves it — during summer vacation, when Paris slows down, cars disappear, and pedestrians reclaim the Seine. “It would be great if Paris were like this all year long,” she says. Soon, she may get her wish.

The banks of the River Seine are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, yet they are occupied by a motorway. Under the new plan, one side of the river would be converted exclusively to park-like space, while the other side would be converted to a parkway, leaving some space for auto movement.

Most likely, this premiere space within Paris will be popular with pedestrians all week just as it has been popular on the one-day per week closures. Critics argue that this will choke traffic and prevent a more egalitarian transportation system (i.e. in Paris, the poor largely live on the outskirts of the city and this would prevent them from having access, so the argument goes). This fails to acknowledge that visiting the renewed banks would not involve the expensive purchase of a private motor car, and that an existing and improved mass transport system can provide easier and cheaper access to the city.

In any case, if this experiment is a success in tightly packed and street-space poor Paris, then it seems more feasible for less traffic-jammed U.S. cities. It already has happened in a few places — the most well known being Portland’s Tom McCall Waterfront Park and a removed freeway in Milwaukee. There are tons of prospects to at least consider — from the central stretch of Civic Center Drive in Columbus, Ohio to the 10th Street Bypass in Pittsburgh along the Monongahela Riverfront (once proposed to be shut down by Mayor Tom Murphy) to the Potomac Parkway in Washington, D.C. and more. (The Congress for the New Urbanism has a list of “freeways without futures.”)

Such moves could make our cities healthier all around — through less air pollution and energy usage, increased pedestrian and bike safety, more places for physical activity and social enjoyment — which all leads to a greater gross urban happiness.

A plan to tear down a segment of I-10 in New Orleans would result in this boulevard returning.

This last week an article appeared in the New Orleans Times-Picayune about that city considering tearing down a segment of the elavated freeway I-10. The idea is to replace the segment with what was originally on the same spot – a center median boulevard filled with trees known as Claiborne Avenue. The teardown would partly be done to bring back the surrounding neighborhood around that the highway construction helped deteriorate.

Another project in Louisville being proposed by the a local advocacy group would replace a portion of I-64 with a boulevard and riverfront parks (along the Ohio River) in and around the city’s central core. Under the plan being proposed by the group 8664, the current I-64 would essentially be rerouted through the construction of a new bridge up stream that would allow traffic passing through downtown to divert on other existing freeways further out. The groups prepared a video below — and their website has a background presentation.

Tom McCall Waterfront Park in Portland, Ore., the site of a former freeway.

Next American City’s Daily Report writes about the Congress for the New Urbanism’s push for tearing down freeways in several cities.

Urban designers took the freeway, which was perfectly suitable as a connector between cities, and tossed it into the city itself……… It sliced through cities, severing their once-convenient grid systems. It blocked access to lucrative waterfronts and cleaved into neighborhoods.

And today we are left with a decision to make on this aging infrastructure: “Do they demolish the existing infrastructure to make way for surface roads and boulevards? Or do they invest in freeways yet again, when it makes even less sense to do so – given their crummy past and the ever-rising cost of gasoline?” CNU, arguing more for the first option, prepared a list of ten North American freeways ideal for demolition.

One of the best examples of a freeway teardown that already occurred is found in Portland, where the former Harbor Drive freeway was converted to a boulevard and the now very popular 40-acre Tom McCall Waterfront Park, named for the Oregon governor who helped make the teardown occur back in 1974.

“The space under the freeway and between Seattle’s Eastlake and Capitol Hill neighborhoods was an enclave of drug activity and prostitution before King County, the city of Seattle and surrounding neighborhoods began construction on the park three years ago, said John Lang. Lang is executive director of the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance, formerly known as the Backcountry Bicycle Trails Club, that spearheaded much of the effort.”

Not every freeway underpass is a good place for a mountain bike course, but there might be other things you could put under them – a dog park is another. I guess the saying goes, if you can’t beat the freeway, join it.