ABSTRACT

Many cities have freeways along their waterfronts that cut people off from the water’s edge, and some cities are trying to correct this problem. San Francisco took down its elevated waterfront freeway after it was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, thus undoing what everyone had come to understand was a terrible mistake of the 1960s freeway building era, and built a transit boulevard and pedestrian promenade in its place (see Chapter 12). New York City took down the elevated West Side Highway that ran along the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan, building a surface arterial in its place and creating a waterfront park containing pedestrian and bicycle promenades (see Chapter 5).