(11-16-2016, 03:47 AM)plam Wrote:(11-15-2016, 09:03 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I think it has to do with diverting pedestrian traffic away from the streets where there are shops and such. I'm not sure how big an issue they are here, they're hardly used, I don't find them all that oppressive. I think it's a bigger problem the blank side of the mall.
I think enclosed malls (outside of downtown) could make fantastic public places (as they were in fact intended) if that was a priority for them, and if they were accessible without fighting traffic.
Malls aren't actually public spaces, though, and we visit them at the pleasure of the owners.
So Quebec City tried to enclose a street and it didn't go so well:
https://www.canadianarchitect.com/features/roch-garden/
They gave up on it a few decades later and it's much better now. Also, yes, agree that overpasses make things not happen on the (public) street.
This just shows that plans need to be developed carefully. Here are several obvious problems with what they did:
1) lack of architectural care. Apparently historical buildings were negatively affected by the roof. This is due to bad design. A design which respected the existing architecture could have avoided this effect.
2) indifference to traffic patterns. The article refers to cutting-off of cross-street traffic. I assume this refers to vehicle traffic since allowing pedestrian traffic would have been a simple matter of having doors on both sides of the building. While I don’t believe that cars necessarily need to be able to go wherever they want, even I wouldn’t cut off a road without understanding the effect on the transportation network and the attractiveness of the affected areas to visitors.
3) single project. Of course the mall attracted homeless, etc: where else is a free roof made available? When there is a single project of this nature it will attract all the people who need a free roof. If this sort of thing were common, they would be spread out and not a big problem (unless people started migrating from other cities — so then the same thing applies on the province- or country-wide scale).
The poor thinking which exists around the notion of weather-protection of pedestrians is summarized by this one sentence: “The roof effectively turned the street into an introverted corridor with reduced connections to surrounding businesses, houses and stores.”
Hang on, how can a roof reduce connections? People mostly move in a horizontal direction. A roof is a predominantly horizontal structure. Therefore, a roof, generally speaking, does not affect the movement of pedestrians. It is the walls usually built near the outside of the roof that affect pedestrian movement.
There are also lots of possibilities for partially-protected spaces. For example, the first floor of a building can be recessed, leaving a path around the building with a roof, even though open to the sides, forming an arcade. This would have been extremely beneficial in the relatively new construction on the west side of King St., which should have been built to allow walking from the LCBO to Willis Way across from Waterloo Towne Square without getting rained on. It is simply not believable that providing a roof of this nature would destroy the street life.
I would also like to point out that one of the supposed negatives of bridges is actually evidence that they are wanted. People say they draw life away from the street. In other words, people use them (when they are useful because they make useful connections, unlike our very limited set of two bridges). The desire for the space outside next to the automobile traffic, specifically, to be where everything happens rather than the space indoors away from the automobile traffic, is ideological. Why shouldn’t things happen in a climate-controlled space?
Having said that, I would also point out that the indoor spaces could be better designed to connect to the outdoor spaces. For example, I like the idea of a building with a path running beside it, and a corridor running next to the path indoors separated only by a glass wall. Stores front on the indoor path, and signs for the stores are also on the outside of the building. Now, I can get anywhere in the winter without a coat, but in pleasant weather I’ll enjoy the trees and breeze outdoors before ducking in to get to my specific destination.
I would give malls like The Boardwalk (dump row) as another example of poor design. By having several “islands” of stores in groups, separated by massive parking lots, they make it so it is more comfortable to drive from store to store. How is this better than parking once, entering a large building, visiting several stores, and then coming out? Even if they aren’t to be fully enclosed, why not one continuous building with an arcade as suggested above, facing the parking lot? This makes it much more pleasant to move between stores without really changing much about the overall design. We could even get really crazy and put this building out at the street (Ira Needles Blvd. in this case) with the parking behind. Then at least some nearby residents might find it feasible to walk to the stores.