Infrastructural OpportunismI-11_A Next Generation Infrastructure Case Study

Federal transportation legislation known as MAP-21 brought renewed attention to a proposed interstate corridor (I-11) connectingLas Vegas and Southern Arizona to complete a new Canada to Mexico, or CANAMEX, corridor. Using I-11 as a case study, our studio explored three key ways otherwise status quo infrastructure can be transformed into innovative, sustainable solutions: by intervening in the design and planning process, by transforming the existing mono-functional freeway prototype, and by evolving the freeway paradigm from an “engineering only”to a “sustainability first” model. Students and faculty from architecture, planning and landscape architecture investigated the possibilities of transforming the proposed I-11freeway from a limited use, auto-dominant roadway (the “red arrow” scenario) into a sustainable, multi-functional, ecologically and socio-economically focused Super corridor (the“green arrow” scenario). The results of this work, summed up on this poster, exhibit the advantages of infrastructure opportunism –leveraging investments intended for status quo infrastructure towards more broadly inclusive, design-centric, next generation proposals.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AMP.105.7

Volume Editors
Luis Francisco Rico-Gutierrez & Martha Thorne

ISBN
978-1-944214-07-4