Transportation Transformations: How Highway Conversions Can Pave the Way for More Inclusive and Resilient Places shares promising examples of efforts to reconnect divided communities by converting highway infrastructure to welcoming, people-centered environments that advance equitable, sustainable, resilient outcomes.

Urban highways in the United States have contributed to many of today’s pressing issues, including structural inequities, racial and economic segregation, increased greenhouse gas emissions, elevated exposure to shocks and stresses, and disparities in health outcomes.

Transforming outdated automobile-oriented infrastructure to promote resilience, health, and equity—by identifying community priorities through robust engagement practices, creating new parks and green infrastructure, and employing nature-based solutions while supporting economic activity—can help support quality of life in communities throughout the United States and beyond.

Cities from Pittsburgh to Toronto to San Francisco are retrofitting or removing highways to create connected sidewalks, art installations, and parks. And they are installing features to manage stormwater and mitigate the effects of extreme heat. Community groups, engaged citizens, public-sector agencies, and real estate developers have formed cross-sector coalitions to ensure that new infrastructure supports resilience, economic prosperity, and equitable development.

Examples of the types of investments being made include:

• Stitches are enhanced crossings over highway rights-of-way. Such crossings often include widened sidewalks, bike lanes, seating areas, art installations, and green spaces.
• Caps are full structural covers over highway rights-of-way that include features such as green space, parks, crossing streets, and buildings. Caps can strategically link neighborhoods that a highway separated or divided.
• Highway removals involve taking limited-access roadways and turning them into lower-capacity surface-level boulevards, green spaces, or waterways. This can dramatically increase safety, reduce traffic, and improve the built environment.
• Public space beneath elevated roadways involves creating parks, enhanced public realms, and trails beneath active roadways.

Efforts to repair the social, economic, and environmental harm done by urban highway projects can provide inspiration and guidance for communities aiming to advance similar efforts. Several overarching lessons can be gleaned from highway conversion efforts. A brief overview is below.

• Understand and acknowledge the current and historical context to build trust. Urban highways are often infamous as markers of physical, racial, and economic divides, and they shape the way many people view and experience their cities. Efforts to convert highway infrastructure into spaces that serve communities must first start with understanding the specific historical context and how the consequences of previous transportation decisions affect communities today.
• Create a community-centered process. Community co-creation must play a key role in efforts to repair the harm caused by many urban highway routings. Using a strong, collaborative, and intentional engagement process can help address the need for greater inclusion of marginalized voices in future growth and development.
• Enhance resilience. Highway transformations can enhance resilience through thoughtful design strategies that mitigate acute shocks such as extreme heat and flooding. Transformations can further address chronic stresses by supporting daily quality of life and improved resident health outcomes.
• Leverage public and private funding. Highway transformation projects are complex and typically involve multiple funding sources, including federal, state, and local funds as well as private investments. Leveraging public funds with private investments will be essential in helping level the resource distribution playing field and ensuring highway transformations can produce the greatest possible benefits for communities.
• Embrace nature. Incorporating nature-based solutions in highway conversion projects—including creating, enhancing, and maintaining natural spaces through investments in permeable pavement, trees, greenways, parks, and wetland restoration—can advance ecosystem restoration while protecting against climate change, improving overall community health, increasing access to nature, and supporting real estate success.
• Integrate local storytelling and art. Highway transformation efforts provide opportunities to collect and elevate stories of area residents and share them through the incorporation of art as significant project components. By honoring the perspectives and culture of community residents through art, highway conversions can acknowledge the past, current, and future of those with ties to the local area.