Halifax Cogswell District Redevelopment

Core idea

Highway interchange removal to urban blocks

Why it matters

Re-stitches downtown fabric on a megablock site

Description

The Cogswell District plan, adopted by Halifax Regional Municipality and under construction from 2019, removes a 1960s highway interchange built for an expressway that was never completed and replaces it with an urban street grid. Its key moves are new development blocks, a transit hub, cycling and pedestrian routes, and public spaces that reconnect downtown Halifax with the North End neighbourhoods severed by the interchange. The municipality itself is delivering the roads and land for redevelopment.

Significance

Cogswell is one of Canada's clearest examples of the freeway-removal movement, converting redundant modernist road infrastructure back into city fabric in the tradition of Portland's Harbor Drive and Boston's Big Dig at a more modest scale. It carries added weight in Halifax because the interchange was tied to the era of urban renewal that destroyed Africville and disrupted Black and working-class districts. The project is watched as a test of municipally led repair of mid-century planning damage.

What shaped it

• Demolition of Pruitt-Igoe (1972)
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)
• The urban freeway (mid-20th c.)

Sources

• https://www.halifax.ca/about-halifax/regional-community-planning/construction-projects/cogswell-
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogswell_Interchange