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MASLA Award of Merit

I-35W Access Project Mitigation and Enhancements
Minneapolis, Minnesota

In the mid-1960s, when freeway planners cleared a block-wide swath almost 70 blocks through south Minneapolis, they had little idea of I-35W’s lasting social and environmental effect. The highways’ massive sunken corridor became both a physical and social barrier that closed off residential streets and accelerated the concentration of poverty, especially to the east.

Led by a partnership of landscape architects and planners from SEH, the I-35W access project grew out of years of public input. Of $160 million allocated for a future freeway expansion, nearly $30 million will be focused on mitigation and enhancements to the public realm. By rethinking neighborhood connections, transit links and economic development nodes, this project uses landscape architecture as a tool for the rebirth of an entire city quadrant.