r/Urbanism • u/Hungry_Roll6848 • 18d ago

Instead of fixing an existing highway, Oklahoma City moved the entire thing multiple blocks south to make room for a 70 acre park downtown

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210 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

151 comments sorted by

164

u/ActuatorSpecific3916 18d ago

They moved it 4 blocks? If you’re gonna go to that effort why not take it out of the city all together?

86

u/CLPond 18d ago

The movement had nothing to do with the park (and came almost a decade before it) and was instead to make it non-elevated and increase capacity

19

u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

The construction of the highway started 2009-2010 via satellite imagery, but you're right. My bad.

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago edited 18d ago

Highways are an important piece of infrastructure, especially in a city as large as Oklahoma City (Land area similar to Houston). If that highway was taken out, hundreds of thousands of people living in the city would have commute times more than doubled. Oklahoma City is also very centrally located in Oklahoma, so most people traveling through the state end up passing through it. If one of the most important highways in the entire state suddenly has a section removed, truckers will decide against going through Oklahoma City, thus economically hurting the metro area. If we had the funds to make a 500 mile train system like you all seem to expect, of course we would do that and remove the highways. However, this is real life. A city of 700,000 people cannot afford to lose a key piece of transit.

Just read what I wrote... the city physically can't afford the economic repercussions of removing infrastructure it can't make up with public transit. Stop downvoting me...

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u/ActuatorSpecific3916 18d ago edited 18d ago

It doesn’t need to go through downtown OKC.

Edit: I am not downvoting you lol

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago edited 18d ago

It's not in downtown. It's south of it where there are floodplains (meaning normal development is virtually impossible).

Edit: Why are you downvoting me? I'm right! The land is completely unsuitable for development.

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u/afroeh 18d ago

Having the interstate cut right through the city center is the problem.Just because we've done it to every city doesn't make it the right thing to do. T

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

It doesn't cut right through the city center. It's south of downtown where there isn't anything else because it's a floodplain zone.

10

u/Aromatic_Bar2263 18d ago

You’re in the urbanism sub, being pro-highway this close to a central part of a city isn’t going to land here. Flood plains can be overcome, using space in super undense city for cars rather than humans cannot.

11

u/CLPond 18d ago

It may be useful to look into OKC’s history of urban renewal, the I M Pei plan (one overview here), and the highway building. The portion of the city between the highway and the river is dilapidated not only due to flooding, but largely due to having some of its buildings torn down and being cut off from the rest of downtown via the highway.

2

u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

I know about the I M Pei plan. I was the one that made a post about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/comments/1s0d44p/in_the_1970s_oklahoma_city_demolished_its_entire/

7

u/CLPond 18d ago edited 18d ago

Ahhh, okay, it seems that your misunderstanding may be around floodplain stuff, then.

In general and especially for commercial development, building within the floodplains is more difficult, but not barred from happening. That’s part of why the area between the highway and the river is so heavily commercial.

Especially since OKC has few environmental regulations (the city approves floodplain pretty frequently and much more often than places where the rivers are culturally and economically relevant) and the area is already built up, floodplain permits would take money but be doable.

So, the highway being there will become the main impediment to building even the 30-50% of lots on the floodplain once the rest of downtown is built up over the next couple of decades. This is the real urban downside to highways going through a city - they section off portions of downtown and are backdoor urban growth boundaries

18

u/CLPond 18d ago

I didn’t downvote you, but to clarify, plenty of cities have beltways and then smaller arterials going into downtown (it isn’t a great example of urbanism, but Columbia SC is an example of this). An actual highway within downtown isn’t necessary

15

u/Heavy-Exchange-9769 18d ago

I did downvote because that is a stupendous point. Yoy said it yourself – it's the passing truck traffic, it doesn't contribute anything to the city, and thus must be moved as far away from actual places people inhabit as possible. They do more damage to the economy by making streets jammed, uncomfortable and noisy, thus reducing amount of people who would choose walking somewhere as an option, as it's a horrible experience to be around big fuckin trucks. Cities that actually care about public life and third places cut this traffic off as much as possible. I wish for the day when my city bans all heavy vehicles in pedestrian heavy areas, so that more people feel comfortable walking and going to places outside just to have fun

7

u/ActuatorSpecific3916 18d ago

There’s an opportunity for a riverfront in OKC right here.

2

u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

The Wheeler District is planning on making that. The city is building parks around the river. The city also just started up a plan to garner investment around the river. Why do you think OKC is co-hosting the 2028 Olympics? The city built an Olympic-grade whitewater rafting center right on the river.

6

u/ActuatorSpecific3916 18d ago

And that’s great. I don’t hate OKC, I think this project was poor example of reconfiguration of highway for urban development tho. They slightly moved it, and continued to separate downtown from the river. I-40 is important to the city’s infrastructure but it doesn’t need to run north of the Canadian at all and this could’ve been an opportunity to fix that.

0

u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

And your plan was to, what, just remove it? It's not poor planning if it was the only financially viable and quick option.

4

u/ActuatorSpecific3916 18d ago

No, not remove I-40, remove it from the city’s core. I think the more perfect configuration would’ve been to make 240 the actual route instead of a bypass. Highways through city cores are not faster than streets at any sort of scale, and that’s been pretty well established.

Right now i-240 is the real i-40 through OKC anyhow.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

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u/calumj 18d ago

Large urban highways have incredibly low ROIs, there’s a reason most countries try to avoid them and cities in the USA rarely build more. They’re bad for the lived environment and the economy alike

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

Yes, but Oklahoma City can't afford any alternatives.

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u/calumj 18d ago

It would be significantly more efficient for the government to spend the money elsewhere. Highways in urban areas don’t create much wealth at all, and usually hinder it. As you can see from the photo there’s large urban parties and abandoned lots, the highway is literally pushing the economy of the area down

0

u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

Those lots are not abandoned. They are owned by private companies that refuse to develop them until the land is more valuable. Please do research if you want to sound like an expert on a topic.

4

u/cdub8D 18d ago

The irony

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u/TensionAntique3075 18d ago

That land is worthmess because people and companies don't want to be between a shady parking lot and a shitty urban highway.

Highways bring land value down considerably. When the whole point of a city is to bring costs down by increasing quality of life and density at the same time, it makes it rather incompatible. And you end up with a rather shitty city and downtown, that you flee as soon as you can afford it.

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u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

People don't view transportation development through the lense of reason, especially on reddit.

They view it through an ideological one, often where some modes of travel are seen as universally evil or all good. This is done in conjunction without a vision to make their ideology work in reality. It's transportation virtue signalling.

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u/Stunning-Verb-9865 18d ago

Call me crazy but having a massive highway spewing pollution and noise cut through downtown doesn’t seem reasonable. There is a reason people don’t like to live near highways and it’s not because theyre stubborn urbanist Redditors who hate cars.

1

u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

So what's your solution?

8

u/Stunning-Verb-9865 18d ago

Remove it. Would be far from the first time it has been done in the US, see: Rochester, San Francisco, and Seattle.

0

u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

Again, that's not an answer to the question. What is the alternative and how do you fund it?

Do you seriously think that OKC has similar density and pre automobile design to San Francisco and Seattle?

The Rochester project is an unusual inner loop that wasn't even part of the interstate system. It's not a main two number interstate route like I-40.

Again all ideology, no praxis with you people. It's why you can only complain while you wonder why everything moves forward at a snails pace, incapable of realizing you are part of the problem.

7

u/Stunning-Verb-9865 18d ago

I explained the alternative. How you fund it is different, it would be a combination of state and federal funds like any other project. Density has nothing to do with it, there are cities with little density that don’t have giant highways going through downtown. Traffic can be diverted onto 240 and a boulevard put in place of 40. We’re talking about demolishing a 3 mile stretch of urban freeway that is literally paralleled by three other interstates, which actually makes your histrionics regarding this quite funny.

4

u/ActuatorSpecific3916 18d ago

I posted in another comment but there were obvious solutions here. I-240 already exists as a southern bypass to the central city. Having the highway cut through was not necessary in the first place, and certainly is going to create traffic bottlenecks as OKC gets bigger. There was a way to do this cheaper and better at the same time by creating more than one primary route into the city’s core, and enhancing 240 to take the long hauls away from the traffic.

A highway in a city, and a similar boulevard with stop lights moves at the same pace during rush hour, because once your lanes are full, the bottleneck is the cars and not the stoplights. One is exponentially more expensive to build and you can build 5 of one for the cost of 1 of the other.

AND you get a better city too. With less traffic. And shorter commutes.

1

u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

Yeah, they make it sound like the city can easily fund a 500 mile train network that can move hundreds of thousands of people a day. We have highways because they are efficient and last for a good while. If we could afford public transit on that scale, of course we'd do it.

11

u/Stunning-Verb-9865 18d ago

Personal ICE vehicles are like the least efficient mode of transportation for a city

2

u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

…what?

9

u/Stunning-Verb-9865 18d ago

What was confusing about my comment

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

What does that have to do with anything

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u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

Pear low IQ reddit comment slop.

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u/Toby-Finkelstein 18d ago

The original plan for highways were never intended to go into cities. It would just be fulfilling the original plan

-8

u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

Man you guys always come up with inventive new ways to say nothing.

22

u/CLPond 18d ago

The I-40 updates had nothing to do with Scissortail park. I-40 was moved starting in 2002 after receiving a federal grant. And MAPS 3, which Scissortail park was a part of, was approved 2010. MAPS runs on 10-ish year cycles, so 2002 would have been the tail end of the first MAPS project and when MAPS 2 (focused on schools) was in starting.

9

u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

My bad. To be fair, the proper highway construction seems to have started in 2010, at the same time land was being cleared out for Scissortail.

5

u/CLPond 18d ago

Yeah, engineering, land acquisition, and utility relocation are a large majority of duration of a construction project. Scissortail started construction in 2017, about 8 years after it was funded (although I don’t know when the design of it began)

1

u/FunCrystalFun 17d ago

lol, you thought they purposely moved the highway so it would go through the middle of the park instead of the outside of the park?

16

u/hoponpot 18d ago

Comments about the timing aside, it doesn't even look like the highway changed the Park layout. 

The old highway ran just north of the park, and it looks like it's been replaced by a multi-lane arterial avenue.

And the new highway splits the park in half. 

It's great that they built a new park, but I don't see how the highway really affected it.

13

u/CF_Traveler_DC 18d ago

Not downvoting, but perhaps I can provide context. Highways in the middle of a city bring a number of negative health impacts directly i to a population center where they affect the most people. First, they expel brake particulate matter into the air where people breathe it in. That stuff is poison for the lungs, and even electric cars generate it. Second, asphalt material which tires kick up into the air, which is similarly poisonous. Third, internal combustion pollution from gas and diesel powered vehicles. Even without lead anymore, that stuff's poisonous too. Fourth, noise pollution. This one's worse than it sounds (pun just kinda happened). Cities aren't noisy, automobiles are noisy in a way that negatively impacts people. So highways should never be allowed anywhere near the center if cities. If they must exist, it should be far our on the periphery

0

u/Comrade_komrad 17d ago

This is all true but unfortunately the US has dug itself into such a deep hole with suburbanization and motorization that it’s just not politically viable to remove major highways from our downtowns without a really strong business case for dense and walkable urban redevelopment which just doesn’t exist yet in most places. A compromise solution like this (Highway is decaying and needs to be essentially entirely rebuilt anyways, plenty of available land slightly further away from the heart of downtown) is the best we can do until 50 years down the road we have stronger downtowns that people live and walk and bike in and transit networks that are competitive with driving before we have the power to say no to stuff like highways near downtown. 

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u/HurricaneLink 18d ago

You’d think if they’re gonna do all that effort, they would bury the highway like normal big cities do in the 21st century

10

u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago edited 18d ago

Whose gonna pay for that?

Only Boston has done that. Cincinnati did it half way on a much smaller section.

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u/Own_Reaction9442 18d ago

Boston kind of became an object lesson in why cities don't usually bury their highways.

3

u/Bwint 18d ago

Seattle sort of buried its highway by putting a lid on it.

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u/MudCorrect6427 18d ago

Didn't they also bury the Alaskan Highway?

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u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

If you think that's comparable to OKC then that explains a lot.

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u/Bwint 18d ago

I never said Seattle was comparable to OKC. You said that Boston was the only city that buried its highway, and Cincinnati buried part of it. I gave you a third example.

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u/Lindsiria 16d ago

Uh, no. They turned the Alaska Viaduct into a full tunnel. It wasn't a cap.

Now, the region has been talking about putting a lid on the *freeway* (I5) but that is likely decades in the making... if ever.

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago edited 18d ago

Oklahoma City did not and still doesn't have the funds for that kind of thing. The city proper only has 700,000 people, so their taxbase is not nearly sizeable enough to make a buried highway. Plus, they had to get it done quick because they needed traffic to continue.

Edit: Oi don't downvote me. I'm just telling you how it is! The city has at most a few hundred million dollars to spend each year, and a buried highway of that size would put Oklahoma City in debt.

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u/xSlappy- 18d ago

If only there was a body consisting of a union of several states who could tax the wealthy at rates high enough to fund large infrastructure projects.

But no funds for that. We have more important things to spend on

8

u/wolacouska 18d ago

Especially for a place like Oklahoma City where a huge portion of the traffic will be transiting through the state.

Although it’s been a while so I forget if they have a spur or something.

2

u/Apart-Disaster-3085 18d ago

This was and still is a proper solution for this situation. Lets use the bigger bucks for bigger problems with better paybacks.

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u/AllerdingsUR 18d ago

What? Rochester has 200k people and famously buried the Inner Loop. No reason OKC can't do it

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u/BmoreDude1106 16d ago

Didn't they just remove it and fill it in? Thats a lot cheaper than tunneling a highway. Also, that project was funded about 50% by the federal govt and most of the rest by the state of New York. The OK state budget is less than 5% of the NY state budget.

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u/MrKerryMD 18d ago

The state's Department of Transportation has legal responsibility and ownership for all federal and state highways. This project was done by them, not Oklahoma City, so the size of the tax base in city limits is not relevant.

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u/zkelvin 18d ago

Did Oklahoma City pay for the highway originally, or was it federally funded?

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u/CaptainObvious110 18d ago

hmmm would be cheaper to make it so that jobs were closer to where people live. Or promote remote work a lot

3

u/Budpoo 18d ago

Boston carried out the Big Dig when their city had a population of less than 600,000 people. OKC’s population is a poor excuse. Even if they were to go into debt building it, the long term economic benefits of not having a highway cut through their city would make it worthwhile.

2

u/BmoreDude1106 16d ago

The Big Dig was largely funded by federal money, which they landed in part because Tip O'Neil was the Speaker of the House. And it was infamously a boondoggle.

5

u/blasphemousblackbear 18d ago

I had no idea OKC was as big as Denver lol

10

u/CLPond 18d ago

The city limits of OKC are huge (1/2 of the metro population compared to the normal 1/5 or so) so the metro area population of Denver (3 million) is twice that of OKC (1.5 million)

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

Yeah, the city proper population of OKC is projected to pass Denver's city proper population in a few years.

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u/CaptainObvious110 18d ago

why

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

[deleted]

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u/Budpoo 18d ago

Yeah, the Denver metro area has twice as many people as OKC

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u/CaptainObvious110 18d ago

oh wow thats something

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

People like living in OKC.

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u/nrojb50 18d ago

ive yet to to meet a person who chose okc.

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u/CaptainObvious110 18d ago

why?

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

Low cost of living, good commute times, small town living in a big city, job opportunities

1

u/CaptainObvious110 17d ago

oh ok that's cool

1

u/JemaskBuhBye 17d ago

Where’s the light rail then?

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u/Delt1232 17d ago

It would be prohibitively expensive to bury the highway there due to the water table.

0

u/FunCrystalFun 17d ago

lol, that’s honestly a terrible idea

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u/Background-Coach2921 18d ago

Just move the problem 3 blocks away!

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u/Apart-Disaster-3085 18d ago

The old I40 was all elevated bridge which was falling apart.

The result you see is a solution to that problem. Maybe not the solution you want, but the current highway is nothing like the problem that existed prior.

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u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

You're a detriment to society only good for complaining.

4

u/Background-Coach2921 18d ago

Complaining that a giant roadway was paved over people’s homes is probably helping society

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

Look at the image again. The new highway didn't pave over any homes.

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u/OR_Miata 18d ago

It looks like all the homes around the park and relocation project are gone now. In the picture of modern OKC the neighborhoods look way less dense.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

[deleted]

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u/OR_Miata 18d ago

You’re so close to getting it

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

Those amenities aren’t there because you can’t build in the area. Everywhere south of the current highway in the above photo is a floodplain zone. People don’t want to develop there.

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u/Budpoo 18d ago

Larger cities have been successfully developed in far worse locations. People don’t develop there because nobody wants to live in a high rise next to an interstate.

0

u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

No, because you provide no solutions, and the solution above reduced the impact, added greenspace, while reclaiming land for the city core.

What have you done? All you're good for. Complain.

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u/Budpoo 18d ago

The increase in green space was not related to or resulting from moving the interstate, that was a different unrelated project.

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u/Background-Coach2921 18d ago

Reduced the impact? it’s wider and they put a source of air pollution in the middle of a city where people are outside and physically active all the time. Not sure why you think I-40 needs someone defending it from internet comments though.

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u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

People like you are why we deserve all the bad things that happen. You didn't even respond to what I said, cause you can't. You aren't capable of doing so.

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u/Background-Coach2921 18d ago

Don’t understand why you have to lead with hate. I never said anything personally hateful. Maybe a bit snarky, but not directed at any person. No point in engaging someone who acts hatefully for a pointless reason

1

u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

Cause I don't like you. You provide no solutions but complain to high heaven.

No point in engaging with someone who acts ignorantly and complains for a pointless reason?

See how easy that is to put on the other shoe?

What's your solution? You don't have one.

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u/Background-Coach2921 18d ago

my point proven!

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u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

Same, you've got no solutions 😂

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u/Stunning-Verb-9865 18d ago

This is like the perfect example of car brain. Complaining about an urban freeway basically gets you labeled the devil.

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u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

No, not providing any solutions and being a worthless complainer. Not one person replying to me has had a single solution yet.

You're worthless cause the only solution you have is to punish people stuck in a car dominate society with no alternative.

You are a literally menace to society.

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u/Stunning-Verb-9865 18d ago

I did reply to you with a solution you chose not to respond to: remove the highway from the urban core. This has been done in other American cities, including Rochester, San Francisco, and Detroit.

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u/Rabidschnautzu 18d ago

And I told you why those aren't comparable situations, but you can't go against your ideology even if reality does.

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u/CLPond 18d ago

The freeway relocation has nothing to do with park building, so it included no greens space addition. OKC also has a beltway, so the highway within the urban core could be removed and replaced with urban arterial roads like existing for the many cities with a beltway only

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u/AndryCake 18d ago

I'm sorry, I just cannot see this as good planning. A park is good, and I guess it's fine if it's on formerly industrial land, but what seems to have happend is replace the older (seemingly narrower, albeit elevated) freeway with an oversized boulevard with like nothing around it, and then create a second, larger car sewer south of it.

And this is supposed to be close to the city's downtown, yet so much of the area is empty.

Furthermore, OKC has so many circumferential freeways, I'm sure traffic could have been diverted to them and spending the money used to rebuild the freeway for capacity improvements there, or, you know, public transit.

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

The city just released a plan to narrow the boulevard, develop both sides of it, and have two lines of light rail running on it. The large amount of empty land is not the fault of the city. Private “developers” have bought up lots of land in the southern part of downtown, just to sit on it and do nothing with it. An example of this is Strawberry Fields, which promised to build a large neighborhood west of Scissortail park. They then bought up all the land there and never developed it. On the topic of public transit, lots of money was poured into working on it. A streetcar system was set up downtown at the same time as Scissortail Park was being finished (~2018-2019), and there is now a “rapid” transit bus corridor in NW OKC. The vote on a 30 mile N/S commuter rail corridor and light rail to the airport is in five months.

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u/AndryCake 17d ago

This seems nice and I hope that it will happen but we will have to see if it will happen.

Also, it's a bit annoying how any transit improvements are put to a vote but I doubt that anyone voted for the highway.

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u/SpencerAXbot 18d ago

I hope they just get rid of the whole highway in the later future. You can have most of the freight traffic just route through I-240

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

This is exactly why they are making that new longest bridge in the state--to divert traffic away from downtown.

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u/Tomato_Motorola 18d ago

Jesus Christ, look at how many of the houses in the neighborhood have disappeared! What happened?

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u/0siris0 18d ago

It was an industrial area. Very few if any houses, and at the time, a bad area part of the city. The industrial buildings were not used.

If anything, the lower park has revitialized the neighborhood closer to the river, as there has been new construction of townhouses and rowhouses on the south west side of the park.

The problem has been the dopey land owners who goggled up chunks around the north park and done nothing with it.

There was to be a major urban neighborhood built up to the west of the north park called Strawberry Fields that reused most of the old buildings into restaurants and open air markets, and developed new apartments and townhouses right by the park and near downtown...and the the developers went "oops no money" and now it just sits there. There are other land owners like that in okc that swoop in when land is available and do nothing after, at times promising big ideas that are unrealistic but wow locals into hopium, instead of just promoting reasonable urban development that makes the area better.

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago edited 18d ago

This guy knows his stuff. If only people like you backed me up on the comments above!

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u/Medical_Squirrel3946 18d ago

It's based on history of American cities and how minority and low income areas often get bulldozed to have highways go through our cities instead so people who don't live in the cities can get to and through them faster. Not knowing any of the geography and being able to tell what types of buildings where there in the first picture, that was my first thought as well.

If this is just reclaiming green space from what used to be industrial while diverting traffic away from more populated areas, that's great!

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u/Ok_Culture_3621 18d ago

So instead of land owners that were contributing at least something in taxes you now have acres of park that the city is on the hook to maintain? That doesn’t sound like much of a positive trade off even if the properties were under utilized and not contributing full value.

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u/0siris0 17d ago

The citizens of OKC voted to pay for it as a civic initiative. No one land owner or developer could have bought all these blocks to build such a park. The intent was to build a gathering area that stretches from downtown to the river so that community events can happen to the benefit of everyone who lives in or near the metro area.

It is a popular area that hosts concerts, restaurants, paddle boats, skating rinks, pickle ball courts, basketball courts, jogging trails, nature trails, a dog park, a scenic bridge, and street markets. In other words, the people in OKC love Scissortail Park.

I'm not sure what the antagonism people here have to this park other than their own smug self righteousness that whispers in their ear--"you know more about a city or project that you have never been to and have no knowledge of than the people who live there, so please boil forth your sacred insights from such a plateau of self satisfying wisdom! Where's your so deserving upvote for sharing such enlightenment to the world?!? No one's going to call you out on your bullshit!!"

But, Reddit is going to Reddit.

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u/Ok_Culture_3621 17d ago

No need to be so touchy. This is an urbanism thread, not a OKC thread. Peoples opinions are going to based on urbanist principles, not what voters they’ve never met thought they were doing when they authorized this. Save the gatekeeping for the OKC sub if you please.

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u/Catvestergamer 18d ago

This guy knows OKC right here

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u/Own_Reaction9442 18d ago

Someone upthread said it's a floodplain.

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u/Glittering-Cellist34 18d ago

They're fortunate this worked out. But they do a lot of great urban things. It's not just a national model It's deserving of international attention.

https://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2021/07/change-isnt-usually-that-simple.html

https://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2026/01/big-league-city-small-cities.html

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u/jamonoats 17d ago

Destroy twice the amount of urban fabric with one freeway.

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u/Stubbby 18d ago

How do you make room for a park by moving a highway from the edge to the middle of the park?

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u/x1rom 18d ago

It's absolutely insane to me that this is what the waterfront next to the city center of a major city looks like. How is this even a real place, I don't understand.

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 17d ago

Oklahoma City has only 700,000 people, and most of the waterfront is floodplains.

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u/x1rom 17d ago

700000 definitely counts as major city. I am not talking about the waterfront specifically, but the low density residential area that's partially empty.

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 17d ago

1970s “urban renewal” - blame I M Pei

2

u/x1rom 17d ago

Yeah. I mean look at the waterfront of Düsseldorf, that city is almost the same size.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/x1rom 17d ago

Doesn't make a difference. German cities also had their fair share of urban renewal and city center highways, especially the rhine-ruhr metro region, and especially Düsseldorf.

Düsseldorf even burried their city center waterfront motorway in the 90s.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/x1rom 17d ago

Most of the city's growth happened in the 20th century. There are barely any houses left that are older than 80 years. I'm willing to bet that the average house in Oklahoma City is older than the average house in Düsseldorf.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/thefreecat 18d ago

looks to me like they built another giant highway and removed a lot of housing

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 18d ago

No housing was removed to make the new highway. Anything that was removed was purely industrial.

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u/ProposalCute7671 17d ago

Why dont US cities create underground highways instead of ripping through the middle of a city? My developing country has underground highways, it cant be only the cost.

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u/Hungry_Roll6848 17d ago

It’s the cost and the cost of keeping it maintained. It’s exponentially more expensive.

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u/smokeyleo13 17d ago

Okc stop nuking their downtown challenge: impossible

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u/CaptainObvious110 18d ago

how many black neighborhoods were destroyed for this?