Gateways: Creating Civic Identity
by Suzanne Sutro Rhees
What impression do you get when you exit the highway and head into town? Can you tell when you're leaving one neighborhood and entering another? A look at how planning for gateways can help create and strengthen our sense of place.
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From PCJ #21, Winter 1996
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What image comes to mind when you think of a "gateway"? It might
be a real gate at the entrance to a country estate, a landscaped
sign at the entrance to a new development, an arch over a
neighborhood street, a park at a highway interchange, or an
entrance corridor into a city with its own distinctive sequence
of signs, lighting, and landscaping. In each case, the purpose
of the gateway is to tell you that you've arrived in a new
place. This article examines some of the types of gateways that
have recently been developed by cities, towns, neighborhoods,
and regions.
The Highway Interchange
The approach to a city or town is usually along a highway, often
by way of an interchange with a limited-access interstate. The
interchange area is susceptible to its own set of problems. It
tends to attract commercial travel services -- gas stations,
fast food, motels -- usually in a uniform franchise-architecture
style. If an excessive amount of commercially-zoned land is made
available, additional strip commercial uses can proliferate,
creating a new business district that can eclipse the real
downtown and increase traffic congestion. Some municipalities
are trying to avoid this result by designing the highway
interchange as a "front door" to their community.
The city of Chubbuck, a small community near Pocatello, Idaho,
recently created a park on a nine acre parcel at its interchange
with I-86. The city used federal ISTEA "enhancement" funds,
state transportation funds, and additional tax increment
financing revenues to irrigate and landscape the site with
trees, grass, and ground cover. Chubbuck developed as a bedroom
community for Pocatello, and thus lacks a well-defined center.
The interchange project is part of an effort to develop the
one-mile highway corridor between the interchange and the city's
existing center as a new "downtown."
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