On May 1, 1996, construction was finally completed on the last section of Interstate 49, a 16.6 mile strip bisecting Alexandria, Louisiana. Eleven years later, Alexandrians are still trying to grapple with the effects of having an Interstate highway cut through the center of town. There have been many positive benefits, of course: I-49 connects two of the nation’s most important Interstate highways, I-20 and I-10, and it has given Alexandria a truly multi-modal transportation system, which plays a critical role in our region’s development.
But the completion of I-49 through Alexandria has also caused some collateral damage to property values within the city’s inner core. As this map illustrates, I-49 forced the City to dead-end a number of streets that previously had enjoyed uninterrupted traffic flow into Downtown. It’s not hard to guess what happened to the area’s property values.
Dead-ending a number of streets, like Alexandria did, can affect bus routes, police and fire protection, and access to other resources, like hospitals. The city’s inner core was unable to retain value, and predictably, the Interstate facilitated sprawl development in all directions.
It is important to remember that although Alexandrians welcomed the “completion” of I-49 only eleven years ago, at the time, I-49 was in its fifteenth year of construction and had been on the books for nearly thirty years. While I-49 may have only been completed in 1996, its footprint had been playing a role in Alexandria’s development for many years prior. By the time the ribbons were cut, Alexandria had already gotten used to I-49.
So it is not accurate to state that Alexandria has only grown around I-49 during the past eleven years. Our growth has been affected by the project for decades. However, we are fortunate, because today, there is a widespread recognition that the sprawl model of growth is no longer in the city’s best interest. We are waking up to a realization that other similar cities had made years ago: unfettered sprawl negatively affects a city’s ability to provide services and does not adequately address demographic changes, such as our city’s aging workforce.
This is why we must look back to our inner core.
Cities do not always develop intuitively or organically. The government often dictates the pace and patterns of development.
When we take a close look at the effects of I-49, it is easy to recognize how governmental decisions impacted development. These decisions were probably based on the conventional wisdom of the time. Although Alexandria’s inner core may have lost value, this loss was mitigated by all of the “gains” the city made in sprawl development, which, after all, was a national trend at the time.
Today, we no longer trend toward sprawl.
Why?
Don Chen of Smart Growth America puts it succinctly: it’s all about demographics. When analyzing demographic changes and shifts, one can better understand the way a city needs to grow. As I have mentioned before, Alexandria faces a looming workforce crisis; on the whole, our workforce is aging, and we are having a difficult time attracting and retaining young skilled workers. For Alexandrians, this is a “chicken and egg” problem.
We have two options. We can look toward our future with a positive yet realistic expectation, or we can look toward our future with a negative and complacent expectation.
A positive yet realistic expectation requires us to understand that the Field of Dreams mentality (“If you build it, they will come”) is not always as prophetic as we would hope. People will only come if what you build is what they want or what they need. Smart growth recognizes this, and it insists that communities plan by consensus.
A positive yet realistic expectation also requires us to believe in our city’s future. In other words, we should plan for success. This is not as difficult as one may think, because, thankfully, other cities have paved the way for us. We now have a much better idea of what works (smart growth, in-fill rehabilitation, projects that address a community’s needs) and what fails.
But before addressing this, let us return to Interstate 49 and the ways in which it has shaped Alexandria. It remains to be seen whether or not the decision to locate I-49 in the middle of town was a good one. Due to its construction and prior zoning restrictions within Alexandria’s Downtown, development radiated outward. Alexandria followed predictable sprawl trends. Alexandria’s inner core was unable to retain value, and today, despite the millions of dollars spent on projects within our Downtown, I-49 still serves as a “buffer zone” and (arguably) a barrier between inner core neighborhoods and Downtown.
How do we break down this barrier? Why should we break down this barrier? What happens to our inner core when this barrier breaks down?
CenLamar 
