ABSTRACT
One community that has worked proactively and successfully to create a shared vision of how its principal highway corridor could be made more attractive is the semirural town of Warwick, New York. Whereas planning for Davidson's Griffith Street gateway corridor involved mostly undeveloped land, a half-developed commercial strip already existed when the local planning board addressed gateway corridor issues along a 1.5-mile stretch of US Route 1 in rural York, Maine, in the early 1980s. Although simple regulations regarding build-to and build-up lines might work in small communities such as York, Maine, and Davidson, North Carolina, larger towns and small cities often need more detailed code requirements. To help communities identify effective solutions, the Urban Land Institute organized a multiday tour and study of three highway strips around Washington, D.C. In general, the teams concluded that many of the lessons learned in revitalizing failing town centers could also be applied to highway strips.
