Across the United States, cities are grappling with the legacy of mid-century urban highways. Yet traditional redevelopment models of large-scale highway caps financed by capturing rising real estate value rarely succeed in post-industrial cities with fragile markets and limited fiscal capacity. The Akron Innerbelt Master Plan responds to this challenge by reframing highway removal as a long-term network and neighborhood repair strategy. The project represents how design can be a catalyst for physical reconnection, socioeconomic and cultural repair, environmental improvement, and long-term community stewardship.

The Innerbelt Expressway is a 4-mile, partially decommissioned highway in the center of Akron, Ohio which was originally constructed between 1970 and 1985 as part of postwar urban renewal. The highway displaced thousands of residents and erased the city’s historic Black main streets. Today, the sunken expressway remains a physical and psychological barrier separating under-served, predominantly Black neighborhoods from downtown Akron.

Rather than relying on a few real estate megaprojects, the Akron Innerbelt Master Plan establishes a design and implementation playbook for incremental reinvestment guided by a strong civic vision and long-term community governance. Developed through a year-long community co-design process involving more than 1,000 residents and 40 local organizations, the Innerbelt Master Plan translates community priorities into a coordinated, actionable implementation roadmap.

The framework integrates transportation, urban design, and community development through a series of safe and human-centered corridors that reconnect street networks, enable multiple forms of sustainable transportation, and support neighborhood revitalization, particularly along historic Black main streets erased by urban renewal. These corridors reconnect West Akron neighborhoods to downtown jobs, services, and parks while transforming hostile infrastructure edges into civic places that support environmental remediation.

Beyond physical design, the plan also introduces financing methods, including ways to funnel air-rights development value into small-scale neighborhood reinvestments as well as aligning transportation investments with neighborhood reinvestment initiatives like support for small businesses, housing rehabilitation and construction, and anti-displacement policies. Together, these planning and design strategies transform a piece of infrastructure while advancing a broader vision of economic, social, spatial, and cultural repair for vulnerable neighborhoods harmed by the lasting legacies of highway construction.

See the full list of AIANY + ASLANY Transportation & Infrastructure Design Awards here.