Greenways Are Reviving American Cities. Some Say They Could Be Improved

On a gray, blustery November afternoon in Detroit, John Kish watches vigilantly as his four-year-old grandson, also named John, frolics on a towering play slide. If the day was sunny, there might be a line to use it, but given the weather, they have it to themselves. 

“It’s a long climb, but it gives them something to do,” Kish says, laughing, as the youngster carefully crosses a bridge within the structure. 

The playground sits at the West Warren Avenue stop on the Joe Louis Greenway, a network of bike paths, walking paths, playgrounds, and activity centers that’s planned to connect 23 Detroit neighborhoods. Once its 27.5 mile length is complete, it also will pass through Dearborn, Hamtramck, and Highland Park, Mich. and conclude at the Detroit riverfront. 

Under construction since 2021, this greenway, named for the champion boxer, is part of a growing urban trend. From Atlanta and Boston to Dallas and Long Island, cities are reclaiming previously industrial or abandoned land and transforming it into recreational areas. 

The best known is the High Line in New York City. Built atop a long-abandoned freight rail line, it opened in four stages from 2009 to 2019. It has become a popular attraction, with an estimated 8 million visitors a year, about one-third of them city residents. 

Along with walkers, cyclists, diners and concert-goers, the High Line has given birth to gardens and spurred economic development along its 1.45 mile path, with apartment buildings facing the pathway and the Hudson River.

That bucolic scene has yet to be replicated in Detroit, but it’s one city officials hope may occur. 

“This is our starting point,” says Crystal Perkins, director of City of Detroit General Services, gesturing to the plaza near West Warren Avenue. She expects the greenway will result in “health benefits, connectivity, and the ability to move safely and easily throughout the city.”

The Joe Louis greenway is being built in sections, with a total cost of around $240 million over the next five to 10 years. It’s a major undertaking, involving the demolition of nearly three dozen abandoned houses, the removal of several crumbling commercial buildings and 23,000 tires. An estimated 40,000 residents will live within a five minute walk of the project. 

Detroit recently received $20.7 million in federal funds to link the project to the Iron Belle Trail, a 2,000 mile walking and cycling path that runs from the western end of Michigan’s upper peninsula south to the Motor City. But Perkins says many more public and private partners are needed to make the greenway a success. “It can’t just be one entity,” she says. 

In New Orleans, the Lafitte Greenway is about to celebrate its 10^th anniversary. Built for a relative bargain of $7.8 million along an abandoned rail corridor, the 2.6 mile project stretches from the French Quarter to City Park, passing through historic neighborhoods such as Treme, Mid-City and Lafitte, which provided its name.

Organizers say it is used by approximately 1,000 people a day, and up to 4,000 during major festivals like Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. The project has roots in a neighborhood drive to reclaim the pathway after Hurricane Katrina. “It’s a bona fide corridor for people to get to work” on foot, bicycle, skateboard or scooter, says Jason Neville, the greenway’s executive director. 

An estimated 500,000 people a year visit a portion of the greenway, which hosts regular exercise classes called Get Fit the Greenway. There are musical performances, tree-planting gatherings and a weekly session of the Crescent City Farmer’s Market. 

Adjacency to the greenway was a deciding factor for Jeff Hinson and Breanna Kostyk, when they opened Flour Moon Bagels two years ago. They were frequent customers at Hey! Coffee, which was the first shop to open on the greenway in 2018. 

Flour Moon’s patio is directly opposite the greenway, and diners can look outside the shop’s windows to see cyclists and walkers passing by. “We feel like the greenway is the front porch of the bagel shop. From day one, we’ve had so many guests stop in, biking or walking,” Hinson says. 

While other New Orleans neighborhoods are much better known, the greenway serves as a draw to convince visitors to explore beyond traditional tourist areas, he said. 

Still, cities need to take more steps to make greenways user friendly, says Anne Lusk, a lecturer at Boston University who has studied greenways for decades.

Many are lacking enough amenities like bathrooms, benches and playgrounds, like the one built in Detroit, that could make them more useful to residents and visitors, especially seniors. 

Lusk says she would also like to see cities build more protected bike lanes on their streets leading to greenways, turning them into seamless transportation systems. 

“The greenway would then serve as the main interstate highway for people using the bike to get to work, the grocery store, the drug store, or take kids to school,” she says.

Another concern, Lusk says, is the impact of climate change on the projects. Lusk would like to see greenways canopied with trees, which are scarce in the industrial corridors where projects are taking place.