Existing Deck Parks

I was able to speak briefly on the phone this morning with Peter Harnik. He wrote the book Ubran Green, which is where I first read about the abundance of highway deck parks. He is the director for the Center for City Parks Excellence, a division of the Trust for Public Land. www.TPLorg/CCPE
This will likely be a good research source for my classmates who are looking at projects in urban areas.
He has shared with me a list of all 26 existing parks over highways in the U.S. Now I just need to decide which ones are most applicable and most documented. Thanks for your help Mr. Harnik!

This project is making me want to give my car to Phil

"Freeways have done terrible things to cities in the past decade, and in many instances have almost irrevocably destroyed large sections of the cities they were meant to serve. On the social level, they…have often devastated, more completely than any bombing, vast acreages of houses which provided needed low cost housing." Lawrence Halprin

"Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf" Lewis Mumford

"Freeways have paid little respect to urban deisgn values. In fact, it can be fairly said that in the disign of freeways no attention at all has been paid to their impact on the image of the city. Views have been pbliterated, important landmarks have been isolated, great waterfronts have been cut off, all by freeways within the cities whom they supposedly serve." Lawrence Halprin

My schedule

My schedule is as follows up until next semester.
I plan on having my research and literature review done before Christmas. I have some good sources gathered. Right now I am looking at some older books such as Lewis Mumford's The Highway and the City as well as Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Both books are well ahead of their time and quite insighful. They both help illustrate the problems that highways bring to cities, but neither address deck parks as a solution. So what about research on deck parks? I may not find much. I may have to rely more on feasability reports such as the one for Los Angeles's Hollywood Freeway Central Park. Perhaps there is more on the internet that I have not tapped yet. I plan on searching hard tomorrow.

 After Christmas I plan on taking care of presidence studeis as well as all site inventory and site analysis. This includes pictures, diagrams, maps and a site model.

Transportation Infrastructure:Landscape Infrastructure__Abstract

In 1956, the U.S. federal government enacted the Federal Highway Act, and the interstate system was destined to change the face of cities across the nation. (Weingroff) These superhighways were seen as great opportunities by most city planning officials. Their construction was seen as a means to rapidly bring people to and from the city. (Kreyling, 29)While the interstate system does serve an undeniably important transportation role in today’s automobile reliant economy, it also functions as a great divider of the urban fabric in many cities. Bridges serve as vehicular connectors of the divisions, but often the only pedestrian connection is a 4’ wide sidewalk flanked by city automobile traffic. The Broadway street bridge over Interstate 40 in Nashville is a good example of this. The interstates also bring undesired noise into the interior of cities. Many cities are building parks over highways to reconnect the urban fabric, increase public green space, reduce unwanted noise, and to help encourage further development, but is this method of using landscape infrastructure to cover transportation infrastructure effective in achieving these goals?             

            Nashville is a city which invited the interstate in the early 1960’s. Today, the interstate loops the downtown district, like a “necklace adorning the central city”(Kreyling, 30). There appears to be an opportunity to repair some of the urban fabric that is today split by I-40 between Church Street and 12th Avenue South by building a deck park. By conducting an extensive study of cities that have built deck parks and using their effectiveness in connection, adding green space and encouraging development, I seek to discover if a deck park in Nashville is a viable option to serve the social, ecological, and economic goals of the city.