atlas

Such a shame. They are not creating walkable, enjoyable streets, which they could do through thoughtful design/integrated mix of uses/adaptive reuse. The question isn’t a matter of affording to do so, it’s a lack of concern for the idea of a city being anything more than an economic engine. No one can imagine people actually wanting to be on these streets and spend time there and so they aren’t, and they won’t.

Does anyone know of any polls that indicate where things stand?

A model for appropriate integration of indigenous populations is New Zealand, where Maori and European populations exist better along side each other as compared to Australia and America. There is still significant issues and disparities but there is more respect given to the original custodians of the land than elsewhere.

We can argue semantics and tone and 'woke' or not woke, but regarding the actual issue at hand, Yvette is correct. Indigenous rights should be given more prominence in society. Here in Australia, no stranger to egregious acts against indigenous populations, the aboriginal flag flies next to every state or military flag. You must proclaim the land and its 'original owners' at every public meeting. Lands have been given back to aboriginals in increasingly large numbers more recently. The list goes on. And it's nice, incredibly important, respectful and more needs to be done. There is a debate here to change 'Australia Day' to another day as it currently falls on the day Captain Cook landed in Sydney Harbour and the "invasion" of European settlers occurred. I am not sure where I stand on that but we shouldn't forget or whitewash the atrocities it took to fortify Australia and America into what they are today and the immense sacrifice indigenous populations have suffered for it to happen.

The fact that everyone is talking so much about it is worrying. It's just like Clinton's email saga. Can we get back to real issues please, like public transportation policy and urbanist policy?

Great work.

Seems unnecessary. What would be better is to 'neckdown' the streets. There is so much leftover pavement that could be turned over to pedestrians. That would also help to slow down traffic.

Or make the south side of it 2-way and close down the north side to make a widened linear plaza for pedestrians. Get tons of green in there to take advantage of the solar amenity on that side of the street and to really give it good vibes.

Does anyone have photos of the completed spaces or the event earlier this week? Would love to see the completed green space if it's now up and running.

Yea that space. It would be better if it the seating wasn't 'fenced' in but spilled out into the plaza. But yea. Those sorts of 'moments' make an urban environment much more interesting. If done in a manner ala Midtown in the 60s-80s amongst ghastly commercial towers, perhaps not the best.

The setback is a great feature. You won't even notice it when interacting with the street. It'll look like the building is built to the sidewalk. Someone who has a problem with this setback doesn't interact much with designing built form. Many buildings have setbacks that you wouldn't know is there because the sidewalk is particularly wide. What gave them the wide sidewalks was a more generous setback. I presume Nada has a setback applied to that building. If so, thank goodness for that setback - that plaza space makes that corner so much livelier than it would be otherwise. That's good urban design.

I think the open space can act as a great gateway to the Market. Particularly if the surrounding lots get quality built form infill and it can have a production function. Not every solution requires buildings, all architects of the world. ;)

You can't overstate the value of the varied, fine grain roof lines. Losing this quality with overly large car parks or faux-grain development should be a concern.

Every residential building in Sydney is all but required to have balconies. We have an Apartment Design Guide (don't let the word Guide fool you, it's practically law) that is based....now I know this is hard to stomach....human needs, behaviour, lifestyle. It's a different climate here but it's essential for quality apartments here. Now on the flip side it can sometimes be onerous to meet all the requirements (60% of all units need to be cross-ventilated, over looking requirements, etc) and the setback controls seem arbitrary and sometimes suburban, but it guarantees a certain level of quality for the humans who live there, not decisions exclusively based on financial modeling, engineers or starchitecture

There would be benefit if it actually acted like a unified metro, with a single central airport and proper transit system. But, you know. :/

Yea I think UC's campus is one of the more interesting and exciting out there, and it still hasn't reached its potential. The friction between the buildings is its strong point, and I hope this is built upon as other parts of campus beyond 'Main Street' transforms. The lawn needs to be enclosed more, or spatially humanists, to give more urban good vibes.

If the ground floor were removed then I'd agree, it would 'feel' brutalist, from that one angle. I'm digging the design. Will be interesting to see what it looks like once built. I can imagine that concrete cladding to be lifeless and soul sucking in person. Perhaps not, though.

can you believe places like this have been abandoned for the likes of Phoenix? So gorgeous. It's in the public good to ensure places like Allentown come back.

Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton are all quite special. Bethlehem is definitely the most 'realized/revitalized' of the 3, is quaint and SteelStacks is an immensively impressive reuse of an old Steel Mill. Allentown is the immigrant hub, though, and feels a lot bigger with a more impressive collection of built form just awaiting investment. The allegiance/economic ties always felt more associated with Philly than New York. They need better rail connectivity but have very frequent fast bus services. I dated a guy in Allentown for a while and was up there often. Some really good Dominican food and a fun little gay bar called Stonewall, naturally.

It would be nice to see it incorporated into the site where the casino garage is now. I hate the thought of losing more public land and losing connectivity. We need more connectivity, not less. Particularly since such a monolithic venture has the potential to kill the possibility of this area ever becoming a more vibrant urban environment we all want.

The urban forms of big things like convention centers are walkability killers. Why was it decided that convention centers have to be one use? It would be great to get some liner retail/ corner activation to help increase the amount of destinations on that block. Residential above would be ideal, but likey impossible. Surrounding blocks would then be able to follow suit.

Truly shocking. I can't believe it is 2016 and this is the best ODOT can do here. That footprint is out of this world inefficient.

5th and Main to 13th and Vine is 0.8 miles by foot, a bit different than 1.0 miles (according to google maps). That'd take a good jaywalker 12-15 min. max to walk. Unless the service headway is every 3-5 minutes or the streetcar is there when they walk up to the stop, I can't imagine many people would take the streetcar to 13th and vine from 5th and main. The walk is quicker (and more enjoyable)than the streetcar. If you've got loads of things you're lugging around, being a busy business person and all...maaaaaybe.

But aren't overall numbers up because of the inflated first week ridership?

That area is what I would consider to be 'downtown Bright.' It is a small cluster of semi-rural retail and there is a skyline up there. So it isn't entirely random. I went there twice and it was a pretty good restaurant. I looked up the new location and it is truly peculiar -- well outside the Harrison we are all familiar with, about 2 miles southwest. I'm sure that they rented that place for virtually nothing.