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Thursday, March 11, 2010

Look at Southwest

Southwest was gutted by urban renewal a couple decades ago, and it became one of the less savory parts of the city. The area is now experiencing a revival, however the original street grid is still decimated by the elevated freeway and railroads and several of the residential and office complexes that occupy superblocks. What would Southwest look like if all the letter and number streets and diagonal avenues were connected across the quadrant? Something like this:


View Southwest L'Enfant in a larger map

4 comments:

Froggie said...

I don't think you can quite blame an "elevated freeway" in this instance. For starters, the freeway is only elevated at the east end in order to cross over the railroad. Most of the Southwest Freeway is actually below-grade and could easily be decked over. You make a much stronger argument regarding the superblocks. As far as Southwest goes, I'd stick with that argument.

Davemurphy said...

Whatever the grade is, only a couple streets cross it in Southwest, which is 14 L'Enfant blocks long

Bayma said...

What street is the line that starts at 6th and Independence SW and goes in a southeasterly direction supposed to represent?

Davemurphy said...

Wow, good question. It appears I erroneously added a diagonal avenue!