With the introduction of the freeway, the continuities of gridded space were thrown into a fantastic reversal. As the first in a series of successive centripetal interventions, the overlay of the freeway signaled a full-on reorganization of both the urban core and the urban periphery.

What made the freeway intervention so powerful was its ability to bypass the existing limit of centrifugal development -- to leap over its edge of growth and begin new autonomous nuclei of expansion. The ability to overreach and subsequently obstruct the greater continuity of the city is decisive.

Following the closure of the centrifugal frontier and the preemption of its expansion, the reorganization of the existing city became inevitable. Surrounded by an antithetical form, the existing core could only transform or decline.