As a city built out to its boundaries, Long Beach’s future growth is limited. If we are to mature as a city, we must develop denser models of development. The days of new office parks and large tracts of single-family homes are over. The concept of more intense development is relatively straightforward, given appropriate planning with a combined land-use and mobility strategy. What is less straightforward is how Long Beach can create and maintain the important functions that sustain city life. This includes schools, open space, major employment centers, and significant transportation infrastructure. These all typically require large amounts of land, as well as public and private resources.
This is the first in an occasional series of applying out-of-the-box ideas in Long Beach to address the needs of a growing and maturing city. Some of these ideas are unique, but many have been applied elsewhere, locally as well as globally. Few are straightforward; all require the involvement of public and private interests even to be properly vetted. The purpose of bringing up these concepts is to begin a discussion with regard to making the best use of the limited resources we have remaining in this city.
As often is the case with freeways in urban areas, Interstate 405 splits Long Beach and Signal Hill from their remaining municipalities, creating division in what could otherwise be contiguous communities. The boundary of Long Beach and Signal Hill along the concrete gulley of Interstate 405 is a veritable wasteland of active and abandoned oil extraction sites, various light industrial sites, automotive dealers, large format retailers, and discontinuous residential housing.
A number of cities across North America and the world have worked to remedy similar situations by literally bridging over separations created by transportation corridors such as freeways and railroads—and in so doing, creating valuable new land for the wider community. Millennium Park is one notable example: this new civic park was created in Downtown Chicago by decking over an existing railyard. The Urban Land Institute published an article written by a Director of the Trust for Public Land regarding the potential of such freeway deck parks.
The cities of Phoenix, Seattle, and Oak Park, Michigan have well-known examples of parks built over freeways. The city of La Canada Flintridge provides a more local example of bridging over freeways for public open space. When sitting or playing in these parks, most people would not know that they are actually above an active freeway. The cities of Dallas, Sacramento, and Pasadena are currently exploring bridging over existing freeways. The City of Los Angeles is beginning to investigate decking over the Interstate 101 in Hollywood to create much-needed open space in that dense urban neighborhood. The cost of decking over a freeway can be significant, but what must be taken into consideration is the value of reconnecting communities that are otherwise torn asunder by our insatiable love of the automobile.
In Long Beach, Interstate 405 travels below natural grade between Atlantic Avenue and Temple Avenue, a distance of one and a half miles. Decking over this length of freeway could result in a public park over sixty acres in size. This new open space, combined with the adjacent area slated to be used for a sports park, could create a regional park over one hundred acres in size, serving the residents of both Long Beach, Signal Hill as well as the nearby communities of Carson, Wilmington, and Lakewood.
The environmental benefit to the area would be substantial, since over one hundred acres of green space would replace what is now only oil extraction sites and asphalt. Introduction of vegetation would aid in storm-water management and reduce the local heat island, as well as create a large urban carbon sink. This also presents the opportunity to “scrub” polluted air created from the cars traveling along the portion of the freeway under the new park.
The intersection of multiple public and private interests in this locale might be a source of strength toward creating this freeway deck park. The area borders four Long Beach City Council districts, two cities, two County Supervisor districts, four California Assembly seats, two State Senate districts, and two Federal Congressional districts. Considering the project involves an interstate freeway and very important component of the regional transportation infrastructure, a considerable amount of city, county, state and federal resources could be put toward developing such a park. One only has to figure out how to herd the various political cats toward this single goal.
Eliminating Interstate 405 as a physical barrier and unifying the various communities around the freeway with a regional park, would provide a significant positive change to this otherwise non-descript, under-values, no-mans land. It might sound unrealistic—but one must remember that Millennium Park and Freeway Park had to start somewhere.
L’ Autoroute Du Nordin Paris (after)