31

URBAN REDEVELOPMENT AND HIGHWAY PLANNING

Carl Feiss, Chief, Community Planning and Development Branch, Division of Slum Clearance and Urban Redevelopment, Housing and Home Finance Agency

It is a very real privilege for me to major provisions of the Act in which speak at this annual meeting of the streets and highways have an important Highway Research Board Committee on role and which the Administrator must Land Acquisition and Control of Adja• take into .account in arriving at his cent Areas, first because I am not a decisions. highway expert, and second, because I The first of these is the requirement consider, as a city planner, that it is that any plan for slum clearance and an important opportunity to be able to urban redevelopment must conform to a talk to men who are trying to solve the general plan for the development of problems of our highways through the locality as a whole. The second fundamental research. requires that a redevelopment plan Before I go too far m what I have to "shall be sufficiently complete (1) to say, I want to make my position clear mdicate its relationship to definite local to you. Mine is the fundamental as• objectives as to appropriate land uses sumption that cities are for people, and improved traffic, public transporta• not automobiles. What I am going on tion, etc.," and provides further, "that to say is based on this assumption. the Administrator take such steps as Also, I hope to persuade you that in he deems necessary to assure consist• planning for the rebuilding of our ency between the redevelopment plan obsolete communities or buildmg of and any highways or other public im• new cities, one objective could be provements in the locality receiving designing the city so well that people fuancial assistance from the Federal would not have to use automobiles in Works Agency" (now the Department of going to work or play, and the city Commerce). would be so attractive that no one The Administrator is also directed would want to leave it, even on Sunday. by the Act to "encourage the operations Or, I suppose we could reverse the of such local public agencies as are objective and, instead of designing established on a State or regional Utopia, we could des^ autopia - the (within a State), or unified metropolitan automotive city in which total mobility basis or as are established on such other is the objective, all people live in basis as permits such agencies to con• trailers and we abandon the quiet tribute effectively toward the solution of residential street for the highspeed community development or redevelop• domestic highway. ment problems on a State, or regional Either way, or by some compromise (within a State) or unified metropolitan between the two, we still should have basis." people as the basic consideration, with One of the basic considerations in those bright shiny gadgets running on planning for the development or re• macadam and concrete sluice ways as development of any area eligible for servants, not masters. Today, I am financial assistance under Title I is the afraid that the question as to who is relationship of the area to the street master is still an open one. Research and highway work which serves the city into fundamental objectives is essential and the locality. The location and if we are to resolve the point. character of existing or planned major In extending Federal financial as• streets or highways in the vicmity ot a sistance to any slum clearance or re• proposed redevelopment project will development project under Title I of the not only influence but may be the prm- Housing Act of 1949, there are two cipal factor in the determination of the 32 new uses in the project area. It is and development if redevelopment important m any case that the street planning is to proceed in a manner system of any redevelopment project which will accomplish the objectives of be mtegrated with the major streets all agencies concerned. and highways of the community and the We have said that the results of locality, and that redevelopment plans urban highway planning and research be prepared with full knowledge of any are indispensable to sound planning for proposed changes or improvements in development and redevelopment. On the major street or highway systems. the other hand, we believe that the Problems of traffic and parking and proper replanning of worn out or public safety and convenience must be arrested areas of our cities can be an carefully considered and provisions important factor in justifying and included in redevelopment project plans supporting the need for realization of which will best serve the new uses in the street and highway plans. the area as well as the community as a whole, and which will be consistent with PSTCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH the long range plans for street and highway improvement in the locality. It seems to me that we must con• Applications received to date by this tinually search for an understanding of Agency from many cities throughout some of the following questions behind the country have focused attention on the human behavior as it relates to flie importance of urban highway programs automobile. Let me suggest here a in the general planning being done for partial list .of both psycholog^ical and the development of these communities social-psychological problems we as as a whole. planners and you as researchers should Solution of problems of traffic, consider. Traffic volume and roadway parking, provision of terminal facil• construction research and analysis will ities, ease and convenience of intercity have greater value to all of us if we and interregional access to areas now keep alive studies of this suggested type. devoted to or proposed for industrial or commercial uses, together with other QUESTION NO. 1. Why do people want problems attending the continued de• to own automobiles? centralization of commerce and Indus• try and shifts in population to the sub• This question has several possible urban and rural areas, are basic to answers, any or all of which may be the development of sound plans for land pertinent to our studies. We know that use and for the provision of community convenience is not the only reason for facilities and services. The conclusion auto ownership. By this I mean con• has been inescapable, that lacking vp- venience of travel from place of resi• to-date scientific information such as dence to place of work or between results from modern urban traffic and places of work. We know that many parking studies and a clear understand• people make trips by car v^o could do ing of those factors which influence and so better by public conveyance at less establish the basis for design of the cost and, in many instances, within the major street and highway system, same time limits. We know that the planning for the future development al housewife often uses the car for shop• our cities or for redevelopment of worn ping when again she could do it as out areas within them cannot proceed conveniently by public conveyance or by with any assurance that our planning walking. We know that there are a will help us to avoid the recurrence of great many unnecessary trips made and the very situations we seek to correct. eiq>erience in the last war during the We are convinced, therefore, that restrictions on gasoline and tires there is need for close liaison and a indicated that many automobile activities free interchange of information between could be curtailed, although we rec• the local redevelopment agencies and ognize that commensurate gearing up the local, State and Federal agencies of public conveyances did not take place. responsible for urban highway planning We do know that poeple very often 33 acquire cars simply to own them or satisfaction for more people in the because they want a bright shiny gadget sense of motion and speed. One of our which they can show off. Part of the most serious problems in residential custom of the country is that every neighborhoods is the high school kid family shall own a car - at least one. with the jalopy who spends whatever We have to accept this as part of the time he can in indulging m the satis• personal pride of each family and faction of high speeds and the dangerous recognize that any shift of population maneuvers of his not too well controlled planned for in urban redevelopment or vehicle. Until we know more about the development will, in all likelihood, fundamental satisfactions obtained in include a shift m automobile location gettmg behind a wheel and putting the in number approximate to the shift foot on the accelerator, we will not in the number of families. have a full understanding of how to control traffic and design our cities QUESTION NO. 2. Why is the auto• accordingly. mobile used as an instrument of re• creation? QUESTION NO. 4. How does one design a street pattern for psychological and The automotive week-end, which is physiological safety? one of the phenomena of American living, requires much research and This IS perhaps the most difficult of analysis. In other countries the week• all the research problems in this area end IS a day of rest or is devoted to on which we need immediate help. Until work in the garden or around the home. such time as automobiles are equipped "Let's go for a drive", is the standard with radar and automatically slow down statement of the American family on or stop when they approach each other Sunday and the hegira from the city to or a telephone pole or a slippery curve the country and return or tours within or a pedestrian and the question of the cities, cause one of the major safety is taken out of the pilot's hands, problems which we face in handlmg the design of new streets and the re• week-end traffic. In many parts of design of old ones becomes the most the country, one of the curiosities of complicated problem we are facmg in the week-end is the driving by those our orientation of the redesign of cities. less fortunate in their residential In urban redevelopment this is parti• accommodations through the better or cularly important since we are anxious "snooty" residential districts - a kmd not to perpetuate the engineering mis• of Cook's tour of the mansions. It takes of the past. We recognize, has been the thought of several city however, that a compromise is con• planners that were the American public stantly necessary with existing land to be housed in less congested con• use and ownership patterns. «We do ditions providing for more garden not know, however, what those things space and recreation area that the are which we should avoid. There has desire and need for getting away from been a good deal of discussion as you the slum or the high density areas know about the effect of billboards as would be lessened and that week-end distracting influences on the eye of driving might be curtailed, thereby the driver. In some states the bill• reducing both the accident rate and board at curves or on dangerous roads congestion of highways. It is recog• has been legislated against as a matter nized, however, that there is a certain of safety. There are undoubtedly other psychological satisfaction in movement distractions which w^ are contmually withm a vehicle, which raises the creating and about which we know very third question: little. Road side markets and un• controlled ribbon development of a commercial nature with its attend• QUESTION NO. 3. Why do people like ant curb cuts and the distractions of to drive automobiles ? neon signs and heterogeneous archi• tecture are to be considered m the same There is undoubtedly a physiological 34 category. Mr. Kipp's report on this Such mutual interests raise a whole subject deserves most careful con• series of new questions themselves sideration. We also know, of course, requiring investigation, some of which that each individual will react to the I will try to touch on here illustrating same stimulus in different ways - just with specific examples. as we know that there is infinite varia• tion in the phsyiological reactions to QUESTION NO. 6. The relationship danger and sudden fright, as well as between urban highway development an infinite variation in the competence and urban redevelopment. of people to concentrate. It should be quite obvious that the QUESTION NO. 5. What is the best replannmg and rebuilding of slum and method to encourage travel by public blighted areas would include where conveyance instead of by private car? appropriate the replanning and re• building of the urban road pattern. We all recognize the fact that the However, the replanmng of the urban continued increase in the number of road pattern of a locality would be, in private cars used in journey to work our concept of local government, the movements per day adds to congestion function of the local planning agency and the cost of municipal management. responsible for the preparation of the It is also a recognized fact that public general plan of the locality as a whole. conveyance can be a much more effi• In only very rare instances will the cient and, in many instances, a safer local planning agency also serve as the method of transporting human beings local redevelopment agency and there• from residence to place of occupation. fore, for the purpose of our present However, despite logic and facts, many activity, we distinguish between the public transportation systems are two responsibilities. Urban highway failing and there is an mcreased dif• planning is a land use function of the ficulty in getting people to travel by general plan which is the responsibility bus, street car, or rapid transit ve• of the local planning agency working hicles. It is mandatory, if further with other local governmental units. decentralization takes place, or be• All urban redevelopment projects, by cause of civil defense purposes dis• Federal law, must relate to a general persal activities shift work centers, plan of the locality as a whole. Where that a solution be found to encourage the general plan provides for highway people to want to travel again by public improvement, including street and conveyance. At present there is un• parking improvement, and such im• doubtedly a shift away from mass provements affect or are affected by transportation. Research is needed the local urban redevelopment program, into how to make a mass transportation then a relationship between redevelop• system attractive and satisfactory and ment and highway planning may be a complete analysis is essential of the developed. journey to work. While such a relationship on the surface may appear indirect, quite the Research is needed into the degree contrary is the case. A number of to which these physiological and psy• cities participating in the Title I pro• chological problems mentioned above gram of the 1949 Housing Act are using should influence our city planning. I urban redevelopment as a basis for a am certam that these fundamental major alteration in the street pattern questions require continued study. and we are assisting in the financmg of Smce urban redevelopment has the advance planning for these projects purpose of rebuilding cities along more and the ultimate land acquisition. A modern lines and cleaning up blight and noteworthy example is that of Nash• slums in the process, it is our hope ville, Tennessee, where plans and that all technicians working m every estimates are well along in a program phase of this activity will realize the for the construction of a limited access mutual interests which are involved. highway in an area now a slum imme- 35 diately adjacent to and around the the radials mentioned above. The capitol. In this case the acquisition of right-of-way for this road and mter- land mcludes not only the right-of-way changes and connecting arteries is for the highway but other properties as part of the urban redevelopment pro• well which are to provide for public ject. Land acquisition for this major buildings and park area. In Nashville, road and some of its connections is then, the first project in the urban re• financed m the same general way as development program involves an im• is other land acquisition in the urban portant addition to a local highway redevelopment program, through loans system as part of a planned multi• and grants-in-aid. The grant-in-aid is purpose improvement. made available when it is determined In Norfolk, Virginia, there is an• that the reuse value is less than the other important development, this cost of acquisition. In this case, while time tied in with a large public housing the State Highway Division has approved program for the rebuilding of Negro the project, some state or other Federal slums. The bridge now under construc• funds may be in the offing for it. Con• tion connecting Norfolk with Portsmouth struction of the roadways themselves - is a single purpose structure. I am pavement, utilities, etc., - can count not questioning its design or structure towards the one-third local grant-m-aid or its importance as a connecting Imk required by the Housing Act, provided to eliminate an out moded ferry system no other Federal aid is used for this but until the Norfolk Housing and Re• purpose. Ownership of land and im• development Authority came along, the provement for the new system will be traffic generated by the bridge was to vested in the city of Norfolk, though be dumped without choice into the the housing project will remain prop• already overcrowded and narrow streets erty of the Federal Government and of a century old slum. From here this the industrial areas will be sold to traffic was supposed to percolate through private enterprise. Here again, you a maze of smaller connecting links and can see a multi-purpose redevelopment over railway tracks either to the busi• program with a highway improvement ness district or to the several radials as a major element in it. mto Norfolk which, stopping at the edge of the built up area, have never quite There are many other cities in the formed a system. Working closely with urban redevelopment program in which the Planning Commission, the Authority land acquisition for urban roads plays and its redevelopment consultants made an important part or in which an urban a careful study of the possible effect of road program directly affects our work. this pending traffic jam on the city. We can assist m the supplementing of They realized how mixed a blessing the local municipal or county programs in new bridge could turn out to be having which a project requires highway im• found that unless the bridge traffic could provements and such improvements be controlled and diverted to specific relate both to a general plan and the channels, no redevelopment plan could project plan. By careful coordination be satisfactory. As you know, contem• of the two Federal aid programs it porary planning thought diverts through should be possible, in many instances, traffic around residential areas and to make the grant-in-aid dollar go planned neighborhoods. With this m much farther. The fact that the Housmg mind, then, the Norfolk Authority came Act of 1949 specifically states that a to the Slum Clearance and Urban Re• redevelopment plan for a project shall development Division with a project of be sufficiently complete to indicate its approximately 110 acres of housing relationships to local objectives as to reuse and approximately 70 acres for improved traffic and public transporta• mdustrial reuse tied together by a new tion, among other public improvements, belt highway leading as a major thoro- gives weight to our purpose here. fare, partially limited access in type, I could go on citing a number of other cutting a swath through the slums and instances of cities. Perhaps I should connecting the new bridge directly with add that in Cincinnati n^ichhas selected eight areas in the Lower Mill Creek 36 Valley. The Mill Creek Expressway applications where a single parkmg lot now under construction which will serve has been the only proposal. We cer• part of the interregional highway plan tainly hope that the time will come when as US Route 25 mvolves slum clearance the entire circulation plan for a city will and redevelopment. In Honolulu, Area include the necessary storage facilities No. 1, at the fringe of the central that will be required as new business business district, involves an arterial ventures are developed and as improved six lane divided highway at grade. highway conditions are made between This highway will serve as a principal the central business district and outlying distribution artery for traffic from the parts of a city. Slum clearance and central business district and is part urban redevelopment can play a very of the Federal aid program of the important role in providing planned Bureau of Public Roads. storage space where it is a logical part of the community development. QUESTION NO. 7. Can urban rede• This leads into a series of research velopment funds be used for the clearing projects in which we will need your of land and its acquisition for parking help and on which I will enlarge below. purposes? The first five questions I did not The answer is "Yes". A redevel• attempt to answer. The next two I did. opment project may be in whole or m The next three I pose for further con• part for parking purposes. It could be sideration. They are questions on which part of a municipal financed parking I hope we can work mutually, since they program in which case the municipality are part of our joint efforts. may become the redeveloper. It could be a private parking garage in a pri• QUESTION NO. 8. How do we prevent vate enterprise commercial redevelop• highways from contributing to ribbon ment project. There are several development? possible variables. Compliance with the general planning requirements of It has been discovered that ribbon the Act and the residential land use developments along roads and highways provisions of the Act form certain tend to create blight and slum. Much restrictions which do not present a ribbon development is commercial in wide latitude m choices. Several cities nature and sporadic in character. Our are already including parking and ga• primary problem in ribbon development rages in their redevelopment schemes - occurs along main arterial routes with• Chicago's Project No. 1 includes a in cities with commercial development large garage, and two large private cutting the efficiency of the roads and residential parking lots and one large adversely affecting adjoining properties shopping center parking lot in a slum to the rear of land abutting on the roads. clearance scheme for which demolition Zoning to date has not proved effective IS already under way. Paterson, New in adequately limiting such development Jersey, in its Area No. 1, is proposing or correcting standing conditions. a street extension and a new bridge Some of our worst slum and blighted over the Passaic River, as well as a conditions occur in the vicinity of such circumferential route around the busi• development and are either created by ness district. Part of this program it or contribute to the ribbon develop• includes a four or five story municipal ment problem. In many instances the parking lot. assessed valuations of land along routes makes the clearance of ribbon blighted It is important to recognize that we conditions almost impossible, and a are not interested in providing assist• number of projects have come in to us ance for isolated parking lots. At all for clearance behind a wall of commer• times they must be related to a project, cial slum. This is a phenomenon so or if the redevelopment program itself common to urban development that it IS a parking plan, it must be directly requires special study before any solu• related to a general plan of the locality tion can be found. Certainly, from the as a whole. We have rejected several 37 standpoint of urban routes and efficient mtensity of use. Apparently throughout land use, a concerted effort should be- the country there is no accepted termi• made to find a means of eradicating nology on road classification in terms this traditional pattern. of widths of right-of-way, pavement widths and types for all kinds of road• QUESTION NO. 9. Does Midway de• way plans. Maybe such a uniform velopment improve land values and if classification would be undesirable, so, how much? but as we attempt to differentiate more and more between kinds of traffic and Apparently highway development of kinds of land use in a planned com• certain types is beneficial to land munity, the need for standards of values In industrial areas.' In urban roadway design which can be univer• redevelopment industrial reuse of sally applicable becomes more appar• slum residential land is possible and ent. As part of this, we also need the appropriate redesign of an industrial the development of standards of the and commercial street system is need• location of underground utilities and ed. If we maintain the usual existing services and a better application of grid pattern as a basis for industrial principles which can be uniformly reuse, we will undoubtedly handicap accepted to both new subdivision de• such reuse. Much further information velopment and the redesign of old is needed on the kind of urban roads street patterns. For the city planner needed for industrial areas to handle there can be no dividing line between trucking and docking facilities for a one type of roadway and another. Each new industrial development. has its function and each may be able Conversely to the industrial highway to become part of an over-all com• development, it is apparent that ex• munication system within a community. cessive traffic for highway development The old pattern of city streets has been tends to lower residential land values. one in which a street has limitless While we recognize that it is important purposes. This has proved most un• to provide easy access from residential satisfactory in practice, and to the to work areas, planning programs are greatest extent possible, we must attempting more and more to insulate modify the existing patterns and create residential areas from high speed in new developments new patterns to traffic concentrations. There are a meet the needs of the people who will number of instances, however, in be using the streets. We must provide which new developments adjoin freeways for the minimum of friction between or limited access highways, but we do the people for whom the city is being not know what the effect of proximity planned and the vehicles which they is on residential reuse value. Careful use in the performance of their daily appraisal of existing situations is need• activities. ed to indicate the character of the protection which needs to be afforded the residential areas and what use to SUMMARY make of border strips of land where high speed traffic may constitute a To summarize the highway problems nuisance which cannot be avoided. as we see them today would be a most difficult thing to do in this short paper. QUESTION NO. 10. Is it possible to I can only highlight a few of the questions develop a nationally acceptable system which our new urban redevelopment of street and highway types? program is raising. I can assure you that it is our hope that, by collaborative One of the problems facing planners effort between the Federal agencies today is the development of an accept• concerned with the physical development able pattern of street types, grading of communities, there can be created a from the limited access highway as the sound advisory system whereby com• primary or maximum to the pedestrian munities throughout the country can street as the possible minimum in work to a common objective, - the 38 improvement of environment for living which we are all facing in making cor- and for work and for the elimination, rect use of this presently lethal weapon, withm our lifetime, of the hazards the automobile.

RESTRICTED DEDICATION OF RIGHTS-OF-WAY FOR NEW EXPRESSWAYS OR OTHER LIMITED ACCESS FACILITIES

T. B. Button, Jr., Attorney Legal Division, Bureau of Public Roads

RESUME' OF ARGUMENT There is no uncertainty as to whether a highway may be established in which an easement of access m favor of abutting landowners does not exist: the laws of 31 of the United States and of England permit establishment of high• ways to which abutters may have no access. The point in issue in this argument is whether payment is required for not giving access rights to abutters at the time a limited access facility is dedicated, whether abutters' access rights necessarily exist or must be granted when a highway of limited access type is established on new location, and so must be extinguished, and paid for, as property rights in the new highway facility appurtenant to the adjoming land. To clear the pomt in issue, authorities are presented which prove:

By defmition, an easement is a right in the land of another: it is not a natural property right inhering in ownership of land per se. Easements are created by grant, smce they are not inherent property rights. Easements of new kmds may be created if not agamst public policy. n Abutters' rights of access to highways are easements, are derived from grant, express or implied, and hence by the conditions of grants new modes of access or no modes of access may be created, which vary from the usual types, as by denying all direct access from abutting land and permitting access only at established junctions via such local, service roads as exist or may be created for the purpose.

Payment of damages to abutting landowners is not required for not creating or giving access rights to highways m the grantor dedication which establishes such highways, because