Resistance at the trench: Why efforts to reinvent the 101 freeway in downtown Los Angeles continue to fail

In the last three decades, five projects have been proposed to bridge the 101 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles; none have come to fruition. Two of significant design merit were selected through international competitions, Steel Cloud in 1988 and the 101 Pedestrian Bridge in 1999. By studying the competition objectives, media portrayal, jury, and winners, this research analyzes why these proposals failed to be implemented in context of the larger planning objectives, politics, agency relationships, and economic contexts of the era. More broadly, this work explores the larger struggle to transform autocentric infrastructure into vibrant and publicly accessible civic space.