Master of Landscape Architecture Thesis Document, University of New Mexico, May 2011.



Abstract:

The freeway as an urban infrastructure is an inescapable fact of modern life, enabling individual autonomy, ease of mobility and efficiency in transportation. However, the singularity of purpose with which it has embedded itself into the city has fundamentally altered the traditional urban fabric, atomizing density and severing vital physical and social connections. In the wake of these infrastructural interventions is left a fractured urban matrix pitted with neglected and underused space. Seeking to explore the potential of these infrastructural spaces as integral to a healthy and vital urban character, this thesis models a typological approach to their design and treatment.