Remapping the Urban Core:
After the Freeway

Evacuation of freeway interstices and the ensuing dereliction of the urban core produce a radical transformation of the urban center. The concentration of vehicular activity around the axes of regional intervention and the subsequent destabilization of urban fabric establishes a series of abandoned interstitial zones.

The replacement of urban fabric with isolated slabs, surface parking or, more frequently, with nothing at all, generated an enormous inundation of urban open space. The urban core was transformed from the "fountainhead of wealth and center of historical space" into isolated corporate development fortified against its problematic spatial residuum -- now designated as the "inner city." The freeway, as well as other centripetal formations, directly set off not only the destruction of the grid fabric but the emergence of a distinct type of contemporary urban space, which may be characterized as implosive.