Magazine

In 2001, Seattle suffered an earthquake that damaged one of its main highways, the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The highway department, city and state began rethinking how to replace the highway; proposals ranged from creating a new, larger elevated highway to digging an underground tunnel highway, to combining these two options with an on-ground highway. Cary Moon, an urban designer and planner, didn’t think Seattle needed a highway at all. She proposed tearing down the Viaduct and re-using its acreage as new public spaces that could improve the area’s ecology, draw tourism and connect the city to its waterfront. In her plan, public transportation, a waterfront urban street, ferry service and city streets would service the Viaduct’s traffic. In 2004, Moon and partners Grant Cogswell and Julie Parrett formed the People’s Waterfront Coalition to rally the public to their cause — and get elected officials’ attention. Five years later, the highway still stands, but the city has come to see Moon’s perspective. This interview was conducted at the end of 2008 and features a postscript from early 2009.