Highway Removal for Equitable Development
In a rapidly gentrifying city, residents in redlined neighborhoods like South Park in Seattle, are quickly displaced. The State’s constitution offered little protections against the effects of the speculative real state market, challenging advocacy groups to become particularly nimble and innovative in protecting residents’ right to their neighborhood.
With this in mind, we saw an opportunity to create more land by decommissioning an underutilized highway that cut the neighborhood in two and use the freed up land for equitable development.
At first, this idea was received as a “cute” idealistic aim. Two years later, it had momentum and public funding behind it.
Role: Project Founder and Strategy Designer 2020-2023
Remove the segment of Highway 99 that cuts through the middle of South Park. Then use the freed up land to in invest in community well-being and prosperity. See pitch deck below:
We used the tools of design thinking to tackle this challenge.
