Changing Skyline: Odd silence on options for altering I-95

The Nutter administration loves to plan stuff. It has probably turned out more master plans in the last four years than the previous two administrations combined. And yet there's one part of the city that it has steadfastly refused to discuss: the I-95 corridor.

Vastly overbuilt in the mid-'60s, the 10-lane superhighway cut off the city's - no, make that America's - most historic neighborhoods from the Delaware waterfront. The broad canyon is a key reason that Penn's Landing, and hundreds of acres along the river, remain undeveloped today.

Given the growing interest in capturing the waterfront's economic potential, the future of I-95 should be a hot topic in City Hall. Instead, it's virtually taboo. The highway barrier rated only a modest mention in the two most important planning reports produced by the Nutter administration - the Delaware waterfront master plan and the citywide comprehensive plan for 2035. The lack of interest is baffling because the segment of the aging interstate that runs through Center City is due for a federal overhaul in the next 25 to 30 years. In the world of highway engineering, that's practically tomorrow.

But if City Hall won't talk about this important issue, there are others who will. On Thursday, the Philadelphia-based group Next American City is holding a panel discussion at the Academy of Natural Sciences on the hot topic of highway removal, with a focus on I-95's Center City segment, between Race and South streets.

Next American City is a hybrid enterprise - part think tank, part website, part magazine - that does deep dives into the issues facing cities. It's Philadelphia's good fortune that its founding editor, Diana Lind, chooses to make the city her home base.

As an outsider looking in, she was struck by the silence surrounding I-95, given how many other U.S. cities were committed to ripping out their downtown freeways. "I don't understand why we're so reluctant to look into something that could produce a big win," she told me recently.

To get a conversation going, Lind will bring in some of the country's top removal advocates, including former Milwaukee planning director Peter J. Park, who led the successful campaign to raze Park East Freeway; Providence, R.I., city director Thomas Deller, who yanked out a piece of I-95 in his downtown; and Aaron Naparstek, founder of the influential Streetsblog.org.