Once upon a time, a project was launched to connect the 5 and 101 freeways around Echo Park via a spur of the 2. Construction on the spur started, then stalled out, never to actually fulfill its purpose. And now time has passed and freeway construction is no longer considered a city priority, so that mile-long stretch is just sort of there, essentially acting as an extra-long off-ramp.
But what if that road to nowhere could be reimagined entirely, into a somewhere all unto itself? That’s the idea behind a new design concept released by the Stoss Landscape Urbanism firm and detailed by the LA Times' architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne. Hawthorne himself deserves some of the credit as well, as these new sketches build off an idea he floated in an essay for the paper last year.
Under the direction of Chris Reed, a landscape architect and Harvard Graduate School of Design professor, the team has a creative vision for a vaguely High Line Park-like approach to the slab, with distinctly SoCal elements. Step one, of course, would be to close the spur to traffic, making it an entirely pedestrian zone. Next comes environmentally-aware, self-sufficient infrastructure, including towers to capture solar energy and rain water, misters that would activate to cool park-goers on hot days and even localized smog filters that would bring in polluted outdoor air and funnel freshly-cleansed oxygen down for visitors to inhale. Also the whole thing would be wrapped in some pretty cool magenta and orange “skin.” The ground level underneath the elevated freeway would also be part of the park, updated with new walking and biking trails.
For those concerned about what would happen to the diverted traffic, it would likely be diverted to Alessandro Street and Glendale Boulevard. Hawthorne cites similar makeovers in cities like Seoul and San Francisco, where busier stretches of freeways than this one were given over to become parks and residents in those places seem to have embraced the change, though he acknowledges a plan like this would likely encounter some resistance in LA from those who live along the paths of the re-routes.
While this idea is only a concept now, it is neat to think about how something like a freeway could in fact become a net absorber of smog and carbon dioxide rather than contributing to pollution and climate change.