The Innerbelt Expressway is a 4-mile, partially decommissioned highway in the center of Akron, Ohio. Constructed between 1970 and 1985 as part of postwar urban renewal, thehighway displaced thousands of residents and erased the city’s historic Black main streets. Today, the sunken expressway, reaching 30 feet deep and 200 feet wide in places,remains a physical and psychological barrier separating under-served, predominantly Black neighborhoods from downtown Akron. Funded through a USDOT Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods (RCN) planning grant, the City of Akron commissioned a master plan for the Innerbelt and surroundingneighborhoods. The brief called not simply for repairing a piece of infrastructure, but for advancing a broader vision of economic, social, spatial, and cultural repair for vulnerableneighborhoods harmed by the lasting legacies of highway construction.
