Learning To Love An Elevated Expressway
Westway, London: Could this be the Gardiner’s future?
Toronto is going through a municipal election right now and the Spacing Votes blog is doing an admirable job of covering it. One of the issues is the Gardiner Expressway, a much-maligned elevated highway that runs along the Toronto waterfront whose fate has been in question for years. Most simply want to tear it down, but a recent report advocates a “transformation” option: embrace the Gardiner by reclaiming all of the underused space beneath it for community, recreational and commercial use.
John Lorinc, Spacing’s election columnist and author of the recently-published The New City, likes the transformation idea. He writes:
The so-called “Transformation” option, at its most basic, involves shifting Lakeshore Boulevard out from beneath the Gardiner and then eliminating several of the space-hogging on/off ramps. The insight at the heart of this plan, developed in 2002 by architects John van Nostrand and Calvin Brooks, is that barrier effect along the waterfront is due to the fact that the two roads are stacked, and thus form a kind of vehicular Berlin Wall. Under the plan — which, at an estimated $415 million, is the cheapest of the three Gardiner options — Lakeshore is turned into a normal six-lane road with no ceiling. But the cool part of this plan is that it frees up acres of publicly-owned space beneath the Gardiner, which can be put to new and interesting uses. This is infill at its grittiest.
Lorinc points to the Westway in West London as a potential model. Since the 1980s, he points out, a not-for-profit trust has “methodically reclaimed 23 acres of land under that expressway” for a soccer field, a skate part, a daycare and commercial, artistic and industrial space. In doing so, they have generated £300 million of revenue, more than paying for the costs of the redevelopment. “This is a terrific example of how city building initiatives can percolate up, rather than being imposed from on high by land-use planning exercises driven by developers, architects and engineers,” concludes Lorinc.
I visited the Westway over the summer and I was impressed. In Notting Hill, there are shops and even a retail arcade underneath the expressway. A weekend street market links the lively Portobello Road with Ladbroke Grove’s shops and tube station. It reminded me of some of the expressways I saw in Hong Kong the previous summer, under which there was park space instead of parking lots. Not all urban highways are necessary; San Francisco’s successful replacement of the elevated Embarcadero with a surface-level boulevard demonstrates that. But why not make the most of those expressways that we must live with?
Office space and a street market under the Westway
Montreal Apartments
A.J. Kandy says:
I think that’s a great idea. I was also struck by this creative use of space when I visited Notting Hill in 2001 - it seemed so brilliant and also, so obvious. In Montreal, we have to live with the barrier effect of the 720, Bonaventure and Decarie expressways. I’ve always advocated decking over a large chunk of Decarie and reclaiming it as either city blocks or a park; the space lost under the elevated sections of the 720 could be filled in with industrial space or creative lofts, shops and more. In the case of the tallest spaces, such as near the western end of St-Henri under the overpasses, there’s enough room for entire buildings.
October 28th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Steve Boland says:
Something similar, albeit on a far smaller scale, has been proposed in San Francisco:
http://www.sfcityscape.com/log_05_10-12.html#1022
I’d like to see the project go further and include some sort of visual masking of the freeway itself. How this might work, I don’t know, although I think ideas should come from the community, from local artists and not from some high-priced consultancy. I also don’t know whether it could ever amount to any more than lipstick on a pig, although I’d certainly like to find out.
October 29th, 2006 at 3:16 pm