Is your city Shreveport?
On Monday, in honor of our series on the proposed I-49 connector in Shreveport, LA, we asked you to do some research into how the construction of urban highways has impacted your own city, and shout out what you found on social media. Your responses blew us away, and they showed us, in less than 140 characters each, just how much of history is on our side when we argue for #NoNewRoads.
Keep learning about the impact of urban highways on the communities we love, and keep using the #MyCityIsShreveport hashtag any time you post about why freeways don’t belong in strong towns. And if you’d like to find out more right now about the many cities that have proven it, your fellow Strong Towns readers have you covered.
From interstates that have devastated downtowns to halted highway projects that preserved community wealth, here are just a few of our favorite responses to our call to action this week:
This highway is now where a river once was. We could be a river city instead of a concrete one. #mycityisShreveport #Baltimore pic.twitter.com/32ZxTLFUQf
— Short Stack (@the_sidecarist) February 21, 2017
Neighborhoods are for people not cars. https://t.co/PU9qK8qXjr #AllendaleStrong
— Smarter49 (@loop_it_49) January 6, 2017
HW 147 razed Durham's Black Wall St and the Hayti #MyCityIsShreveport https://t.co/SmWHPhUyap
— Midtown Bike (@midtown_bike) February 20, 2017
Buffalo - destroyed Humboldt Park an Olmsted Park to build a freeway, the Kensington Expressway. https://t.co/J999ne0wjM #mycityisShreveport
— SUNY Last Frontier (@SUNYLF) February 21, 2017
"I-980...leaves us with a scar across our city" https://t.co/RFeE0tmeJ9 #MyCityisShreveport @strongtowns @connectOAKLAND https://t.co/Z0LiJeXaDo
— Mike Linksvayer (@mlinksva) February 21, 2017
https://t.co/fixCrHEzpV #MyCityIsSheveport #AllendaleStrong
— Andrew Wagner (@Andy_j_wagner) February 22, 2017
Highway 40 (I-64) splits St. Louis in half, isolating neighborhoods from the central corridor #MyCityisShreveport https://t.co/OcceqOeN1Q
— Paul (@STLExplorer) February 22, 2017
Highway through the Arboretum? https://t.co/LhFyRD13Rv #MyCityIsShreveport #AllendaleStrong
— Andrew Wagner (@Andy_j_wagner) February 22, 2017
(Top image of Mill Creek Valley in St. Louis, MO, via Next STL)