Quote of the week, buried in the Post-Gazette:Responding to New York architect and developer Stan Eckstut's observation that Downtown Pittsburgh has too much public open space for a healthy retail environment, electrical engineer Alan R. Huffman of Pine writes: "The greatest damage to the retail environment in Downtown Pittsburgh has been done, in my opinion, by continuing to construct large office buildings with no first-floor retail space. I worked Downtown for many years and watched this take place along Liberty Avenue and around the PPG building as well as many other locations. Many street-front retail and hospitality locations were wiped out by this construction. It's a trend that probably dates at least back to the Gateway redevelopment."
Straight to the truth. Paging Jane Jacobs!
2 comments:
Building a zillion office parks in every Pittsburgh suburb didn't help either.
Parking is free and people can live where they work.
Maybe a "downtown" isn't really that vital the modern city.
Peter, I think you miss Jeff's obvious point. Parking "dawn tawn" is very expensive, and inconvenient. This is partially because of the topography, i.e. 3 rivers. I would never concider a job downtown solely because of that.
PS. I would rather be wounded by a large caliber handgun that take public transit. All the people wearing aluminum foil hats feel compelled to talk to me. Ya, go figure.
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