examples of cities with highways running through them

[francishsu]

Seattle, Orlando?

[evac311]

I agree evac.

Althought 131, did rip families from the West Side and added to distrust for local, state, and federal governments through this community it hasn't provided that much distraction from the downtown community as The Grand River has. The River has provided the seperation of the socio-economic classes that immigrated to Grand Rapids. In early Grand Rapids, The Hill and The West Side was contrasting and continues to this day.

I am sure that in the design of 131, downtown was the only way to be sucessfully implemented of the roadway. The river has divided the settled community for centuries and I wonder if 131 has even added to this as much as it feels. I would contest that it does because it is very elevated and now is designed with a closed face. The current design only mitigates walking through desinated throughways.

Yeah, I grew up in Burton Heights, and there have always been certain areas of town that, when I go there, seem like they belong in a different city. The more I think about it, the more I realize that the city really is divided by a number of natural and man-made boundaries. The Grand River and 131 being two of many examples.

Some areas are simply divided by hills like the John Ball/West Side neighborhood is divided from the area just west of there on the other side of I-196 and up on the hill. What is that neighborhood's name anyway?

An example of a cultural boundary can be seen in the stark contrast between the north and south sides of Burton, between Division and Eastern. Mostly blacks living north, mostly whites living to the south.

[LA Dave]

I agree evac.

Althought 131, did rip families from the West Side and added to distrust for local, state, and federal governments through this community it hasn't provided that much distraction from the downtown community as The Grand River has. The River has provided the seperation of the socio-economic classes that immigrated to Grand Rapids. In early Grand Rapids, The Hill and The West Side was contrasting and continues to this day.

I am sure that in the design of 131, downtown was the only way to be sucessfully implemented of the roadway. The river has divided the settled community for centuries and I wonder if 131 has even added to this as much as it feels. I would contest that it does because it is very elevated and now is designed with a closed face. The current design only mitigates walking through desinated throughways.

Well, US-131 not only ripped apart the near West Side communities, it walled off the West Side (at least north of Fulton) from the river and continuity with the downtown core.

It should be remembered that the first white settlement in Grand Rapids was on the West Side, the Slater mission in 1824. When the West Side was built up, starting in the 1870s, it was a factory district with immigrant communities, Irish, Polish and Lithuanian primarily. But this was also true of the factory area north of downtown along the river. I wonder what would have happened if the freeway had not been built in the early 60s, and the West Side communities allowed to develop. Would there had been gentrification like Heritage Hill? Clearly, you would not have had the excellent housing stock of Heritage Hill, but then the Old West Side of Ann Arbor doesn't have that kind of housing stock either, and it is a very desireable place to live.

Rivers can be bridged. Freeways, especially elevated noisy ones, are a bigger barrier in my opinion.