• CNU releases Freeways Without Futures 2025

    The report highlights bad freeway planning decisions and how damaged cities can be healed.
    CNU just released its ninth biennial Freeways Without Futures report. Since 2008, CNU has presented a list of highways through cities that we and others think would be better unbuilt. The report has spearheaded our efforts to draw attention to the damage caused by in-city freeways and the...Read more

  • Envisioning Hartford: infrastructure, equity, and renewal at a critical crossroads

    Envision Hartford rejects the notion that smaller cities must accept decline and can deliver a bold, pro-urban legacy worthy of the region’s time and treasure.
    As federal, state, and city officials move forward with plans to reconstruct Interstates 84 and 91 through Hartford, Connecticut, a rare opportunity emerges to repair the city’s fractured urban fabric and revitalize its economic base. For decades, motorists have sped through Hartford, unaware of...Read more

  • Stretching the imagination of a community’s highway-to-boulevard dreams

    IMAGINE: The Future Grand Rapids vision replaces US-131 in the Michigan city with a green, low speed boulevard and reconnected street grid.
    When people are forced to live for generations with destructive infrastructure, like an urban highway, they tend to restructure their lives to accommodate it and “work around it,” making it difficult to imagine that any other alternative will work. IMAGINE: The Future Grand Rapids is building a...Read more

  • Stop the freeway expansion, build a boulevard

    The West Toledo Expressway destroyed 900 buildings, mostly homes, in 1972 and accelerated a decline that continues to this day. Now, Ohio Department of Transportation wants to expand the highway. Instead, let’s bring people back with a boulevard.
    On December 15, 1972, the 9-mile West Toledo Expressway, today’s northern leg of Interstate 475, opened to fanfare. Headlines proclaimed it “a gift.” It’s doubtful that those owning the 900 destroyed buildings in its path—mostly homes—shared that view. The Ohio Highway Department Deputy Director...Read more