Transitional Infrastructure

The current momentum towards higher-speed rail in the U.S. poses a future where passenger rail service begins to quickly sprawl into regions which have only seen freight trains move through cities for decades. This future towards increasing intercity connectivity poses an opportunity to act as a spoke for urban revitalization in cities that have been affected by decentralization and failed attempts at urban renewal over the past century, such as seen in Louisville, KY. With Louisville’s six freight rail lines owned and operated by CSX Transportation, the city demonstrates tremendous underutilization of rail corridors in urban areas. Private rail companies who own these spaces lack incentive to create development beneficial to the city they’re located in, however, as more new rail services become funded by federal, state, and local governments, cities begin to see incentive for this new development to act as a catalyst for re-densifying urban cores through city-specific approaches.

This project zooms into an elevated stretch of one of Louisville’s rail lines near the city’s urban core and proposes a phased approach to redeveloping the spaces along the line into community and transit-oriented developments. The design phases take place over the next several decades - the first being in the present as the line remains privately owned, the second during the transition period from freight to higher-speed passenger transit, and the final focusing on surrounding urban growth and densification once passenger rail is fully implemented. Increased traffic and use of various programmatic spaces along, beneath, and above the track will encourage and necessitate mixed-use growth and pedestrian development in the surrounding areas, setting up a future of a re-densified urban core which successfully generates public activity and acts as a case study for cities across the U.S.