Residents keep comparing it to an old Joni Mitchell song

October 22, 2018 7:17 PM

The city that built a forest on top of its unused downtown freeway.
posted by Chrysostom (19 comments total)

It sounds nice, but if this is a real thing, why does the article have a rendering rather than a photo of it in action?
posted by Dip Flash at 7:20 PM on October 22, 2018 [8 favorites]

Looks like they may have used the wrong tense in the article. That or Akron has developed both a downtown freeway park and time travel.

This article has some more detail - apparently there is a temporary park in place while they work on development.
posted by q*ben at 7:36 PM on October 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

That or Akron has developed both a downtown freeway park and time travel.

The lede will have been buried.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:40 PM on October 22, 2018 [9 favorites]

Wow. Apparently this all started happening shortly after I left, so I was surprised it was Akron just because the Innerbelt was in fact still in use at the time I moved away in 2016--it's been closed less than two years. But traffic there was literally so low while I was there that I think they could have covered several lanes of the actual highway with trees and nobody would have noticed. I'm afraid that the actual development is going to wind up with more housing and shopping that people who actually live in the city of Akron can't actually afford.
posted by Sequence at 8:27 PM on October 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Their facebook page has pictures, and the rendering is pretty accurate. Right now it is basically a new, small park with newly planted trees, at a location which connects to the towpath trail. The work is slowed by the much larger project proceeding around it--the cleanup of the cuyahoga (correcting for old combined sewer overflow.) Our water bill is just ridiculous the last year or so, but if we get all this out of it I'll be gratified.
posted by TreeRooster at 8:41 PM on October 22, 2018

Joni Mitchell, on the other hand, keeps comparing it to an old Residents song.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 9:04 PM on October 22, 2018 [9 favorites]

Surely an old Talking Heads song?
posted by moonmilk at 9:11 PM on October 22, 2018 [10 favorites]

(in response to the article, not to Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon, whom it's an honor to meet)
posted by moonmilk at 9:12 PM on October 22, 2018

Heaven is a place where nothing is ever paved to put up a parking lot.
posted by ericost at 9:35 PM on October 22, 2018

Or an XTC song.
posted by Grangousier at 1:18 AM on October 23, 2018

Here in DC they are putting buildings on top of our heavily-used downtown freeway with the Capitol Crossing project (that Wikipedia article isn't great at the moment but the other search results I found weren't any better).
posted by exogenous at 4:10 AM on October 23, 2018

See, also, The High Line.
posted by The Bellman at 5:31 AM on October 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Or, its inspiration, La Promenade Plantée.
posted by kokaku at 6:46 AM on October 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

Take that, thread from last month about urban farming!
posted by aspersioncast at 1:15 PM on October 23, 2018

Heaven is a place where nothing is ever smelly tongues are paved to put up a parking lot.
posted by aspersioncast at 1:19 PM on October 23, 2018

But no Garden Bridge
posted by chavenet at 1:25 PM on October 23, 2018

We'll always have the Bridge of Flowers and the Flower Bridge.
posted by moonmilk at 4:48 PM on October 23, 2018

The article has a rendering because the website wasn't updated and the journalist who wrote the article didn't have time to look up any other photos. The website also didn't have any of the events that were on the Facebook page. Update your website, people! From the location tag on Instagram it looks like a pretty normal community park (also, temporary community park > gross empty lot).

https://www.instagram.com/explore/locations/1878964132404993/innerbelt-national-forest/

What I'm always more interested in learning about these kinds of spaces is how much time and funding is needed to implement them and how to empower people from the community, especially marginalized people, to actually go there. According to a PopUpCity article Franks hired three people to "represent the University of Akron, the West Hill neighborhood and downtown Akron". That's really interesting!
posted by storytam at 11:13 PM on October 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Like, how did they choose those three neighborhoods? How sustainable was funding for those employees? How much would it cost and how many full-time employees would you need to make this a sustainable thing rather than temporary? The article headline says the city built this but it looks like this was the effort of one designer who got a grant from the Knight Foundation: did the city contribute any funding at all? Was that artist invited there by community activists, supported by a city grant, supported by a nonprofit or did he have to fund himself during the (often long and arduous) grant proposal process?

Public space is valuable and it doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's not like Field of Dreams where if you build it they will come, there has to be marketing and outreach and maintenance and sustained effort. Somehow, though, the way we talk about it often erases the role of money and labor in favor of cozy community feelings.
posted by storytam at 11:31 PM on October 23, 2018