Critics rarely take advantage of their position to propose urban initiatives of their own, but when they do, it usually merits some serious consideration.

Christopher Hawthorne has issued an inventive, but well-reasoned, proposal to remake the awkward terminus of the 2 Freeway, where it "bends south and west from Interstate 5 and dips into Silver Lake and Echo Park, two miles or so from downtown Los Angeles," into a new urban space.

Noting the general feasibility of the idea – similar projects have had little to no harmful effect on traffic conditions – Hawthorne asserts that transforming the freeway could turn "noise into quiet, gray into green, dangerous into healthful, a no man's land into a destination."

Hawthorne proposes a variety of possible programs, from parkland to housing to storm water treatment (or all of the above), rather than prescribe a single idea. In the process, his call reads more as an invitation for designers than an edict.

He concludes by suggesting a glimmering horizon for the city: "[The contemporary L.A. freeway system] is not merely the giant remnant of an old-fashioned, car-centric way of making cities. It has the potential to be the foundation for a new vision of Los Angeles urbanism, recreation, ecology, landscape architecture and mobility."

Related:

• Finding "Shelter" in Los Angeles' housing chaos

• LA's freeway system is becoming an increasingly crowded 'neighborhood' for the city's homeless

• "Take the 10 to the 110 to the 101": Why Southern Californians say "the" before freeway numbers

• Christopher Hawthorne on repairing L.A.'s long-broken relationship with its freeways