A Comparative Evaluation of Highway Removal Experiences in Different Countries across the World
Subject Areas :
1 -
Keywords: Highway Highway Revolt Movement Highway Removal Effects of Removing Highways,
Abstract :
It seems that in the recent decades, a new relationship has been taking shape between urban highways and neighborhoods around them. Despite the increase in automobile production and heavy traffic rates in metropolises, we have faced the removal of some elevated expressways for the purpose of creating surface-grade roads and urban spaces. This indicates the negative impacts of such highways on their adjacent neighborhoods, and even on the city itself as a whole. In fact, we can say that the negative impacts of highways were so large and remarkable that urban officials were forced to remove them in cities such as San Francisco, Boston, Toronto, Seoul, etc. In this paper, we have tried to review the experiences of different cities around the world in removing highways. So, we have applied a descriptive-analytic method and use T test in SPSS. To this end, we comparatively studied the experiences of different cities in removing highways in order to find the reason behind these removals and also to carefully determine the effects of constructing highways before and after their destruction. In cases studied, removing highways and replacing them with urban boulevards or public spaces have revitalized the neighborhoods around these highways and had positive social, economic, environmental and even traffic effects on the adjacent neighborhoods and even the city, itself. This result is justified and proven by the cases studied in this paper.