State Road 520 (SR 520)

Seattle

Ken Greenberg is serving as a member of an Advisory Group to the Washington State Department of Transportation on the State Road 520 project. The planned rebuilding of this critical piece of mid 20th century highway infrastructure has gone through many iterations and many stages of public review. Many of the practical elements of the plan have been reviewed and approved at many levels. However, this project provides the opportunity to further refine some of the practical features of the plan by extending beyond its basic transportation role. Additionally, and most importantly, this project provides fresh opportunities to synthesize the various ambitions of the project into a compelling vision for this part of the city. Through the intervention of the Advisory Committee the Department of Transportation (WashDOT) now describes the vision as comprised of a "city axis", a "blue/green" axis, and a gateway to the city. The city of Seattle Design Panel has endorsed this diagrammatic and preliminary vision to inform the core infrastructure project. This project provides the opportunity to breathe life into this diagrammatic vision with explicit depictions of the potentials inherent in this preliminary concept by communicating the potentials of this critical site that are presently unrealized latent potential.