Fix Philadelphia's Parkway by Turning Logan Circle into a Square

As the Benjamin Franklin Parkway approaches its centennial in 2017 and 2018, a group of scholars and urbanists are planning a multiyear celebration of the parkway’s role in Philadelphia. The steering committee asked [Gregory Heller] to participate in their planning group, and though the invitation flattered me, it also gave me pause. Does the Parkway really deserve a multi-year celebration? No. Why? Because, as hard as it may be to admit, the Parkway was a mistake.

Numerous writers have highlighted the Parkway’s shortcomings. For example, in a 2012 article on Hidden City, Greg Meckstroth called it “a veritable museum ghetto that often becomes desolate at night. . . . [T]he Parkway appears to be condemned to sour monotony.” Pulitzer-Prize winning architecture critic Inga Saffron began a piece about the Parkway: “Ever since the Parkway opened nearly a century ago, Philadelphians have been trying to figure out how to fix it.”

A plan by Center City District in 1999 proposed the ambitious idea of turning Logan Circle back into a square. Logan Circle today is basically a traffic rotary. It creates a barrier that destroys the urban fabric in the northwest quadrant of Center City. Given its critical location at the midpoint along the Parkway between the Art Museum and City Hall, and the final transition before Center City devolves into an expanse of ten-lane traffic, Logan Square stands a chance to become reconnected to the surrounding urban fabric.