What if we transformed a highway underpass?

An interview with Ward 9 Alder, Caroline Tanbee Smith by M. & Ayusha.

M. Holmes: Tell us a little bit about yourself and this project.

Caroline Tanbee Smith: I think that I would say that the spine of my life is a love of place, that’s what fuels most of what I do. I serve on the City of New Haven Board of Alders, as an alder for ward 9. It’s a special ward, it includes two different neighborhoods, East Rock and Fair Haven, with the I-91 dividing these two neighborhoods from each other.

I came to New Haven when I was 17, in 2010, to attend school at Yale as an undergrad, and just completely fell in love with this city, and have now been living here 16 years. Hopefully I’ll be here for a really long time, if not for the rest of my life.

MH: Amazing, can you share a little about the I-91, this underpass project and how it came to be?

CTS: Totally. It started with Ben, he had this idea ten years ago, alongside some others, like hey, there’s this large, beautiful space in the underpass and what if it was something. It’s one of those ideas that’s been kicked around for years in the city- it’s almost like every city has ten good ideas that you just need a little bit of will to make happen- this is one of them.

So about a year and half ago, I texted Ben, to say let’s actually make this happen. On a real emotional level, I felt the physical divide. It felt really important, given New Haven’s history as the model city, a city that’s really known to be deeply impacted by urban renewal, that it’s now a moment where it can be a leader on dealing with the impact of highway construction. That can start by reimagining these spaces of neglect, into areas that are assets for the community. There are four underpasses in this ward alone, and many could be key routes for students who live in Fair Haven and attend Wilbur Cross High School [in East Rock] to travel to school. Yet they don’t have access to them even though it’s where the river goes through and they are such beautiful assets.

It’s now been a year and a half of community engagement where we’ve put out surveys, had design sessions, had a lot of people involved to touch this space and imagine what it could look like. Now we’re kind of at the moment in time to put pen to paper, and say, alright, let’s take all these ideas and turn it into something real.

It’s been a real privilege to work with the youth design team, a group of high school students who were especially engaged last year. It was really special because, our hope for this project is that, five years from now when it’s actually built, some of these high school students who will be off being architects or being politicians or whatever they want to be, can look back and say, hey I had a role in that, hey I own that project in some way shape or form.

Frankly, this is a project that makes me quite emotional, given the history of pain that highways have had on the city. It’s just really, really exciting to be part of a future of promise in this kind of space.

MH: Why is it important to you that the design conversations you are having around it are intergenerational?

CTS: Yes, I mean, we wanted to bring a lot of different people to the table because the ideas are just better. In the first year, we had so many high school students who came, but then also, we got this grant from the AARP [American Association of Retired Persons]. It was the first grant to land for the program, the AARP is quite a visionary organization, and they’re thinking about individuals ages 50+.

So I think it’s been really great from the beginning to have young people involved, and also to be financially supported by an organization that is thinking so tenderly about older members of the community. On a practical level, the plan is better because more people are involved. And on an emotional level, I think it just makes us happy. I do believe means equal ends- a joyful process, has an impact on a joyful conclusion and a joyful plan. I can only imagine, and hope, this results in a plan that is as strong and as joyful as the process that went into building it.