Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.
It’s a link to an article talking about 5 cities – New York, Milwaukee, Seoul, Portland, and San Francisco – who all demolished an elevated highway that used to run through their downtowns.
To be completely fair, some of these cities didn’t really have a choice. San Francisco’s Central Freeway was so badly damaged in an earthquake that it had to be closed. But it doesn’t make the lessons any less relevant.
In all of these cases, the elevated highways were taken down and never replaced with another highway. Some were turned into large boulevards. Others were turned into parks. But in none of the cases was a new road of similar capacity built.
Intuitively it might seem like this would cause utter chaos. I mean, where were all of these cars going to go?
But that didn’t happen. Instead, demand redistributed itself. Car volumes dropped dramatically. More people took transit. Some people took other routes. And some people traveled at different times. Oh, and nearby property values all went up.
And the reason this happened is because of something that economists call induced demand (I’ve written about it before, here). What it means is that as you increase the supply of some valuable good (such as free highways), more of that good becomes demanded.
In other words: more free highways = more cars on the road.
So if you’re a city – like Toronto – with an elevated highway running through your downtown, you should give this some serious thought. The outcomes aren’t as bad as you might think. In fact, they’re quite good.
In 1980, the last train ran on an elevated corridor on the west side of Manhattan known as the High Line. Originally built in the 1930s, the trucking industry had made these trains obsolete and service was halted.
At this point, neighboring property owners began to lobby for the demolition of the High Line, as they no doubt saw it as an opportunity to increase the value of their land holdings. But thanks to local residents – most notably a man by the name of Peter Obletz – the 1.45 mile-long elevated rail corridor was saved from demolition.
In 1999, Joshua David and Robert Hammond then decided to form a non-profit with the goal of both preserving and reusing this unused rail corridor. The group was called Friends of the High Line.
By the early 2000s, Friends of the High Line had successfully made an economic case for transforming the rail line into a public open space and things started moving forward. Initially, it was thought that a public park of this sorts would attract about 400,000 people annually and generate upwards of $286 million in new tax revenues over the following 2 decades (Globe and Mail).
With these expectations in mind, construction on the new High Line Park began in 2006. The first section opened in 2009 – a decade after Friends of the High Line was formed. And the third, and last section, opened just two weekends ago at the end of September.
Today the High Line Park attracts 5 million visitors a year and is believed to be directly responsible for about $2.2 billion in new economic activity. The increased tax revenues over the next 2 decades are expected to reach about $980 million. Without a doubt, the High Line has been a huge success. It has become the 2nd most visited cultural attraction in New York (Globe and Mail).
Which is why every city now wants their own High Line. Philadelphia wants one. Chicago wants one. Mexico City wants one. Seoul wants one. And the list goes on. Here in Toronto, we’ve recently proposed one called the King High Line, which will connect the Liberty Village and West Queen West neighborhoods across a rail corridor.
While I do believe that this is an important connectivity problem to be solved, I worry about how explicit the references are to the actual High Line. Even the street furniture is the same in their promotional video.
I worry not only because it means we’re clearly taking on the role of follower, as opposed to leader, but because an elevated park isn’t going to work in all urban contexts the same way that the High Line worked in Chelsea. This is similar to how Frank Gehry can’t magically turn your city into the next Bilbao.
So while I have shown my support by becoming a “Friend of the King High Line” (and I would encourage you to do so as well), it’s important to keep in mind that the problems we’re trying to solve here aren’t necessarily the same ones that New York had to deal with.
The High Line – from the start – was designed to have an intimate relationship with its surrounding buildings. The tracks rain directly through them so that the trains could easily load and unload their cargo – that was the whole point. So when the High Line was redone, all of a sudden these buildings were able to reconnect themselves to the park in a way that they were already accustomed to doing.
But in Toronto’s situation, and perhaps in your city, that’s not the case. We’re talking about stitching together two completely disconnected neighborhoods. It’s a noble goal and certainly one that I wholeheartedly believe we should pursue. But I don’t think we should assume that it’s a problem that has already been completely solved for us.
I fundamentally believe that it needs to be the backbone of any well functioning and thriving metropolis. As the global economy continues to become an increasingly more urban one, we are seeing the rise of cities at a scale the world has never seen before.
Tokyo is over 37 million people. Jakarta is almost 27 million. Seoul is almost 23 million. And the list goes on. With cities of this size, do we really think it’s reasonable for everybody to be driving around in cars? It ain’t going to work.
Here’s an image from the Guardian, with the title, “Imagine if Paris had as many new cars as Mumbai”:
Now, by global standards, Toronto is a relatively small city, at just over 6 million people in the region.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t have challenges. In my view, the single biggest threat facing Toronto’s long term economic competitiveness is our severe infrastructure deficit. It’s impacting productivity levels, social cohesion, the environment, our global brand and many other things.
Because of this belief, I’ve become interested in the work of CivicAction. It’s a group of non-partisan civic leaders who care about the future of our city. They have 3 areas of focus:
Accelerating regional transportation
Enhancing the region’s economic performance
Fostering inclusion and resilience
They’ve just launched a pledge that allows Torontonians to make their voice heard to elected officials. I just pledged to support new ways to raise funds for a better transportation network, and I would encourage you to do the same if you care about the future of our city. I know I certainly do.
At the time of writing this post, 2,821 members of the general public and 126 elected officials had pledged.
