Much of the land on which the Park East Freeway stood on the north edge of downtown Milwaukee has been vacant for years, but Peter Park has no regrets about his important role in advocating for tearing down that section of elevated highway.<\/p>\n
The day after Milwaukee County sold a large piece of the land for $1 to the Milwaukee Bucks for development connected to construction of a new basketball arena, Park returned to Milwaukee to pick-up where he left off in 2003, criticizing urban freeways and advocating for \u201cmultiple use\u201d downtowns and neighborhoods that are attractive to pedestrians.<\/p>\n
Park spoke at an \u201cOn the Issues with Mike Gousha\u201d program at Eckstein Hall. He was the planning director for the city of Milwaukee from 1995 to 2003 and was an influential advocate of changes in downtown Milwaukee that have been made (two-way streets replacing one-way streets) and are still coming (a street car system).<\/p>\n
Park said an entertainment center was one of the things envisioned more than a decade ago for the land where the Bucks\u2019 development will go, and the length of time when nothing happened wasn\u2019t a problem. He said sometimes it\u2019s best if things don\u2019t happen all at once. \u201cRome wasn\u2019t built in a day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, there has been a lot of development adjacent to the Park East land that would have been less likely to occur with the freeway there, Park said. He mentioned development of the former Pabst brewery buildings and new buildings along the Milwaukee River.<\/p>\n
And beyond that, Park remains an outspoken critic of highways running through cities. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen any neighborhood in any city get better when a freeway was cut through it. Right? Does anybody know one that got better?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe limited access highway in the city is simply the wrong thing,” Park said. He said cars were useful and were not going to go away, and he did not consider transit options the antithesis of the automobile. Rather, transit is an important part of offering people the elements that make urban life appealing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fundamental thing that makes great cities is (that) we\u2019re all pedestrians, we all have a distance that we\u2019re comfortable walking,\u201d Park said. He said high quality life in a city includes \u201cexperiences (that) are informed at the speed of walking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Park said the United States emphasized car-oriented living in the period after World War II. \u201cIt was like a big experiment. We tried it. It didn\u2019t really work. There is no great city in the world that you can think of that gives priority to the automobile. It just doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked by an audience member if he had changed his views on anything since he left Milwaukee, Park said he now puts more priority on community involvement in planning processes. Developments such as the rise of social media made such involvement easier.<\/p>\n
After leaving Milwaukee, Park was planning director of the city and county of Denver from 2004 to 2011. Since then, he has been a visiting design critic at Harvard University and a professor at the University of Colorado in Denver since 2011, He also has a private consulting business. He continues to live in Denver.<\/p>\n