It's green, it's safe, it's pedestrian / bike friendly and they are always at grade, so it's accessible. Cars only go 10mph (the distance is so short, they couldn't go much faster anyway). The freeway takes up almost no land -- it's just a single 1 minute walk to either side. Plant bollards at both ends to block the cars, and it's now 100% safety for everyone at all times.

Here's a really creative example from Seattle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_Park

> Any big grade change and long distance between buildings suppresses non-car use

I don't think that's inherently true, it's just the cheap way to do it. Freeways can be high density and pedestrian friendly too. They just usually aren't, for the same reasons buildings aren't -- it costs money.

Additionally, there doesn't need to be any distance between buildings to have a freeway. See Cobo Center in Detroit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-10_(Michigan_highway) or Washington State Convention Center in Seattle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_State_Convention_Ce...

I can’t easily figure out what proportion of other trips happen by bike/walking, what proportion of students walk/bike to school, etc., but I would be surprised if they match cities like NYC or Boston or most parts of Europe.

I don’t know what your neighborhood is like in person: how well trafficked is that underpass by pedestrians and cyclists in practice? Having some freeway underpasses near low-traffic streets be “pedestrian and bike friendly” doesn’t really help anyone if nobody walks or bikes anyway because there is nothing nearby to walk to because nearby places are extremely spread out and largely designed with the expectation that people will visit them by car, e.g surrounded by giant parking lots, with inconvenient road plans, etc.

The Southern CA town I grew up was similar low-density suburban with freeways passing through, and there were various ostensibly pedestrian-friendly freeway crossings here and there, but in practice few people ever walked anywhere except in the small downtown area or maybe exercising their dogs or going to one or another park (a decent number of kids <16 rode bikes around though). One of the nicest low-density suburban places I know of, but life for kids without cars was necessarily highly structured and relatively isolating.

You picked a spot right near the downtown between a low-density residential neighborhood and a commercial area, but looking at a satellite view and map search most of the residential areas in the city and surrounds seem to be relatively far from shops, restaurants, grocery stores, schools, ..., (at least compared to denser cities) so in practice many trips probably require a car. I’ve never been there so I can’t tell you what it’s like in practice.

But anyway, with that said, as low-density suburban development goes, Grand Rapids looks pretty nice, just judging from satellite view. Not my personal cup of tea, but definitely better than lots of places in the US.

The worst part though was getting off work late and tring to go for a nice walk, only to find the sidewalks and half the street flooded from the heavy irrigation! I get that rain storms there flood things, but this was a consistent "lets flood a lane on either side of the street watering our lawn".

And this is the best-case scenario, where the highway is relatively permeable because it's next to downtown.

The Columbus freeway cap is a far better example of integrating a freeway into a neighborhood: http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/.a/6a00d834518cc969e... https://www.google.com/maps/place/Columbus,+OH/@39.9740161,-... But it's an expensive enough project that it can't be possibly be duplicated on every street crossing, and the freeway infrastructure surrounding it still profoundly separates downtown from its neighborhoods.

What Strong Towns is about is prioritizing cheap, maintainable infrastructure that supports walking and biking— and freeways are not remotely cheap, especially when designed to be anything but an awful experience for those not in a car.