Just a half century ago, they cost million of dollars to build. Now a handful of cities across America are tearing down their urban freeways.

Hey! That's what Portland did!

According to this article, Baltimore, New Haven, and Providence are all in the process of tearing down freeways that fifty years ago razed neighborhoods and cut off pieces of downtowns. Baltimore's experience is the most moving:

"It tore apart the social fabric of the community, and it created division. For those communities, it was the last nail in the coffin," says Jamie Kendrick of the Baltimore City Department of Transportation. The highway's removal was motivated in part, he says, by the "idea that these communities that suffered injustice 40 years ago are finally able to correct some of that injustice."

In other news, did you see that people in the Pacific Northwest are driving less than we were 10 years ago? When will the era of new freeways be over?