The Oak Street Connector was controversial from its inception. Building the Connector required the destruction of hundreds of businesses and thousands of homes. When finished, the Connector divided downtown from the Hill neighborhood and the Medical Area, leading to the isolation and decline of a once strong neighborhood, and to a division between the city center’s two engines of economic development - the Medical Area and Downtown. Almost from the time it was completed, planners and community leaders have recognized that a wasteland of uninhabitable space was created, and many have wished or have proposed that the Connector be undone. And now, the City of New Haven has given serious study to how this might be accomplished. The League has estimated that between 11 and 13 acres of land could be reclaimed, returned to good use and put back on the tax rolls.
The Connector was built on an untested theory that revitalization depended on bringing cars with suburban shoppers and commuters into the heart of the city. Venerable old New Haven businesses, such as Malley's department store, competed to be closest to the highway. They believed that a new building, standing out on the highway like a sign, would be a better location for business than their landmark store - the crown jewel of New Haven retail directly on the Green. Instead, Malley's was the first major downtown business to fail. Its distance from foot traffic on the Green proved as fatal as the dire Redevelopment Era streetscape: a landscape of giant blank walls and one-way arterial roads, elements which are adverse to pedestrians, retail success, and the development of vital civic spaces. Malley's is just one of many sad stories in New Haven (and in the nation), of unproven urban theories being built on a massive scale to catastrophic result. How to undo this damage is not simple because over the last two generations, we have lived with and continued to build upon the inheritance of the Redevelopment Era. Its basic elements - of super-blocks, separate uses, one way streets, the accommodation and proliferation of cars and parking structures to the detriment of mass transit - continue to shape new development. Again, the old Malley's site stands as a vivid example of this flawed recent past affecting a new plan. The site will soon be occupied by Gateway College. Designed in two giant blocks, with no retail to activate the street, and with 1,200 free parking spaces ear-marked for students, the new campus repeats many of the basic errors of the Redevelopment Era.
So the question to ask is not simply how to remove the Oak Street Connector, but also how to rebuild streets and how to create new zoning and land use plans to allow the project to succeed. New Haven's best loved places - the Ninth Square District, the Green, and Upper Chapel Street - provide good examples of mixtures of building scale and use that work in our small city now, just as these urban patterns worked in the city's golden age of the 1940's and 1950's. These urban places thrive and survive because they are based on common and flexible building types that combine stores, offices and places to live, along streets which are graced by distinguished civic and religious buildings, on walkable streets.
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Who we are: Founded by citizens devoted to protecting and enriching New Haven's natural assets and urban design, the New Haven Urban Design League works to improve the quality of life in New Haven by promoting projects that enhance the culture, beauty, and utility of the City - both in its neighborhoods and in its region. Through research, education, and advocacy, the League works to strengthen the civic culture that is the foundation for good government, good planning, and good development.
What we do:
Today, the city faces great challenges - New Haven's future depends on a public, engaged and equipped with the knowledge and resources necessary to promote good design and planning. The League works with neighborhood groups, businesses, elected officials, and government agencies to make the city a better place to live.
The city and its waterfront are now facing a massive upheaval. The expansion of I-95 and the Q-Bridge are guaranteed to transform the city. Our goal is to find ways to mitigate the impact of this massive highway project, and find ways to improve the waterfront and re-connect it into the life of the city. The League has been actively engaged in protecting and enhancing New Haven's waterfront for parks, port development, business and open space. In 2001, the League sponsored an interdisciplinary conference and public program on the development of the waterfront that gave impetus to the development of a Port Authority and continues to guide our work in community planning projects.
The League works to support the quality of life and stability of New Haven's neighborhoods. To protect and enhance neighborhoods, the League has helped found and strengthen neighborhood groups, revise and reform zoning laws, support historic preservation, encourage density and re-population of the city, and create good schools that serve and fit their surrounding neighborhoods.
To address environmental and safety issues created by cars, create a better downtown, and to foster the development of an equitable and sustainable transportation system, the League introduced and continues to advocate for policies and projects based on parking and traffic demand management.
Want to learn more?
Contact us at 624-0175 or at urbandesignleague@att.net
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