In the demonology of the contemporary city, is there anything more
toxic than the expressway? Dividing neighbourhoods, depressing land
values, concentrating atmospheric pollutants, the mammoth
infrastructure of the expressway is now increasingly crumbling into
the ground.
How did we build the expressway world in the first place? And what are
we going to do now with it now?
This eye-opening book explores these questions partly through the
great expressway abolitions of recent years, such as Boston’s
Central Artery (buried and covered by a park) and Seoul’s
Cheonggyecheon (replaced with an artificial river). But the book also
uncovers the hidden stories of expressways that have become weird
attractions in their own right, from London’s Westway to São
Paulo’s Minhocão, celebrated in art and literature. Above all, the
book proposes, counterintuitively, that we find ways to live with the
expressway world and to adapt it to a different future, inspired by
the many examples where people have already reinvented this
challenging legacy on their own terms.
Engaging with case studies across the world and recent thinking in the
environmental humanities and architectural theory, this is a
thought-provoking invitation to reconsider the most maligned
structures of the recent urban past.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781509560110
Publisert
2025
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Polity
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter