Free Bridge Lane: Transforming a Road into a Promenade
Odalys Benitez, Willow Nagai, Joseph Salazar
isolation, the Piedmont Environmental Council and Charlottesville-area advocacy groups have explored a reworking of existing infrastructure to meet biking and walkability needs of residents. Following a successful pilot of the safe streets program on the Belmont Bridge in 2021, the open streets movement in Charlottesville has expanded to other parts of town. On November 1st 2024, Albemarle County pedestrianized Free Bridge Lane, closing it to vehicular traffic and resulting in a huge win for the community. Inspired by the Ciclovia tradition, the community has taken it upon themselves to install their own pop-ups, like a Story Walk and a Telephone of the Wind.
For my final practicum project in my fellowship with the Piedmont Environmental Council, I worked with two other fellows to contribute to the community’s collective imagination for this space, pulling from global research, our own local contexts, and interviews with community partners. Our hope was to offer a fresh perspective on what is possible here, providing our research to reduce barriers to ideas that might seem otherwise unattainable.
This project started off very open-ended. Given Free Bridge Lane’s recent pedestrianization and lack of funding, we worked with little constraints for ideas and installations we could suggest. Beyond considering cost, lifetime, and durability, we were given discretion to research everything that existed locally, internationally, in festivals, etc...
This was exciting. Given my limited experience with the realm of urban planning, I was looking forward to becoming more acquainted with this space and discovering what was out there.
However, in this process, I couldn’t quite let go of a feeling that this was....wrong. Not the process of research, but rather the act of ‘giving recommendations for Free Bridge Lane’ as outsiders who don’t live in the area or are a part of the communities. I recalled my experience in school, designing a tool for a senior citizen through extensive participatory design and grounding in Ela Ben-Ur’s Innovator’s Compass.
Holding this, and the open-ended format of the project, I began to research methodologies for this type of work. I found clarity, finding spaces like the Center for Urban Pedagogy, and learning of critical placemaking, third spaces, and “Right to City”.
From here, we approached this work and interviews with a disclaimer: “we are not from here. The community is the expert in this space, and the ones with the greatest right to reimagine their space. Our positioning in this project is like that of a vessel that facilitates ideation and brainstorming, while pulling from our education and local contexts”.
Through the few (but incredibly rich) interviews with community partners and stakeholders, we assembled a mosaic of the values, desires, and ideas the community holds for the space. Of course, this is not representative of the feelings of all stakeholders involved, but we found it quite interesting to run
into recurring themes of revitalizing the river, promoting ecological resilience, supporting local businesses, adding essential infrastructure, and making Free Bridge Lane—not just a park—but an experience/landmark that residents and visitors alike can enjoy.
From this mapping, we found a couple of prominent themes for community member’s desires for Free Bridge Lane.