Last downtown pedestrian bridge
I read this story about downtown Atlanta’s last pedestrian bridge in the AJC, and I just thought, why even build the last one?
(The story is meant to alert readers of a street closure because of the construction, and I have no quarrel with the story).
The bridge will connect several downtown hotels, and a Hyatt spokeswoman notes it will likely be the last pedestrian bridge built downtown because an ordinance is now in effect that bans construction of such streetscape-killing pieces of infrastructure.
The spokeswoman says connecting the hotels will boost economic development. Perhaps it’s intended for when there’s a conference in one hotel but some attendees are staying in another spot.
But this ain’t Minneapolis! Despite the weird Global Cooling Atlanta is seeing, surely hotel guests can descend to the street and walk across to reach the other hotel — n’est-ce pas?
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Comments
4 Comments on Last downtown pedestrian bridge
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Lance on
Mon, 1st Mar 2010 12:25 pm
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Darin on
Mon, 1st Mar 2010 3:11 pm
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rptrcub on
Tue, 2nd Mar 2010 1:08 pm
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Lance on
Tue, 2nd Mar 2010 3:07 pm
Maybe attendees of Atlanta conferences are sick of people offering them grits and calling them “sugar” every time they hit the sidewalk. It’s all well and good to complain about “streetscape-killing”, but Atlanta would be done no favors by a policy that causes visitors to fight their way down Courtland while dodging gratuitous extra syllables and the parasols of careless southern belles.
I think we’re lucky that it isn’t financially feasible to put downtown streets inside covered tubes in order to protect visitors from even seeing homeless people. Because if it was affordable, we’d have that to deal with too.
Until the ground level of those Portman buildings — as they face Harris and Peachtree Center Ave, particularly — can be retrofitted to exhibit something other than barren walls and service entrances, pedestrians aren’t missing out on any potential for urban vibrancy by walking through the human habitrails. The city made it’s mistake decades ago when signing off on construction that contained little or no chance for ground level retail. The pedestrian bridges are relatively innocent add-ons to that larger problem.
Bitter much, Lance?
Just an exercise in casual absurdity. There’s not much in the way of parasols and grits downtown these days.
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