‘It’s kind of a melting pot’: how one US city transformed a highway into a leafy oasis
Özet haber: The BLVD is home to 250 enterprises, from banks, tattoo shops and restaurants to museums and a performing arts centre
The BLVD is home to 250 enterprises, from banks, tattoo shops and restaurants to museums and a performing arts centre
Passing through the Mojave desert on State Route 14, going by landscapes Hollywood uses to represent alien planets, a driver might not expect to find a walkable, tree-lined boulevard.
But there are nine beautiful, leafy blocks on West Lancaster Boulevard, a piece of what used to be Highway 14. They were redeveloped as part of a mixed-use urban streetscape in the city of Lancaster, California in 2010.
The BLVD, as it’s been rebranded, is home to 250 public and private enterprises, from banks, tattoo shops and restaurants to museums, a performing arts centre and a public library. City Hall is just a block south.
The city invested $11.5m (£8.5m) to transform a busy thoroughfare into an inviting public space. The three lanes in the centre of the former five-lane road were replaced by a series of tree-lined ramblas – Spanish for “avenue” and “watercourse,” because dry stream beds served as streets in early cities.
The redesign was planned and funded by the city of redevelopment agency. Within four years of completion, it had generated more than $270m in economic output, attracted $130m in investment, created hundreds of jobs and prompted the building or renovation of hundreds of housing units, according to the city.
The revitalisation has also created more intangible benefits, residents say.. The city centre the feels like a gathering space, they said — somewhere where they can feel like part of a community.
John Elford, the manager of Lancaster public library, was a reference librarian when construction began. Customers were angry about the disruption, and many complained about a major city centre thoroughfare being torn apart.
“Suddenly it was all done, and they had the grand opening,” Elford says. “Everybody loved it and the complaints stopped.”
The more beautiful and walkable space encouraged people to get out of their cars, he says. People who hadn’t visited the library began to wander in. Their questions began to change. Instead of asking for a specific title, visitors wanted to know where the fiction or non-fiction sections could be found. They started spending time in the library, perusing books or reading quietly.
The change has made the library feel more like a community space that all residents can share, Elford says. In the past, encounters with homeless patrons sometimes drove other visitors away from the library. But Elford says people have come to know their unhoused neighbours, and sometimes witness their transformations through contact with the library’s social workers.
“They start to get to know that person without actually introducing themselves to them,” he says.
Property and business owners went into partnership with the city in 2013 to create the BLVD Association, a property-based improvement district — a defined area where businesses work together as caretakers and promoters with funding from city taxes.
