Oklahoma City swaps highway for park

Tear it down. Build a park.

The aging Crosstown Expressway — an elevated 4.5-mile stretch of Interstate 40 — will be demolished in 2012. An old-fashioned boulevard and a mile-long park will be constructed in its place.

Oklahoma City is doing what many cities dream about: saying goodbye to a highway.

More than a dozen cities have proposals to remove highways from downtowns. Cleveland wants to remove a freeway that blocks its waterfront. Syracuse, N.Y., wants to rid itself of an interstate that cuts the city in half.

Benefiting from a Cover Up

Cities reap rewards for decking highways with parks

By PETER HARNIK and BEN WELLE

U.S. cities are increasingly putting freeway segments underground and covering them with parkland. Whether called a lid, deck, bridge or tunnel, there are already some 20 highway parks in the country, several under construction - most notably, the Rose Kennedy Greenway park atop Boston's Big Dig - and at least a dozen more in the planning pipeline. As urban auto impacts become less welcome, these decks have moved from the novel to the expected. Despite the sometimes considerable cost - as much as $500 per square foot - they are no longer classified as porkbarrel. They've been redefined as amenity investment with high economic payback.

The Kids of Christopher Street
By STEVEN KURUTZ

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The pier itself has been transformed in recent years, and the changes have heightened tensions between residents and the pier kids. Once a crumbling and desolate area that gay men and teenagers claimed for themselves and fashioned into a sort of West Side Casbah, the pier has become a buzzing, crowded part of Hudson River Park.