01-24-2020, 09:42 AM
(01-23-2020, 09:12 PM)plam Wrote:(01-21-2020, 07:02 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: What is wrong with Square One? Not including the parking lots, which are apparently slated to be replaced by mixed-use development.
I think it's this thing that we talk about sometimes. Square One and all malls make me uncomfortable as not-actually-public spaces that are solely devoted to consumerism and where the protections of the public sphere don't hold. I don't enjoy interacting with panhandlers and would like our society to have real solutions, but having them out of sight is not a solution.
By the way, it's not just Wellington that has awnings outside stores. Even tiny Elora-sized towns around Wellington have them. They're mostly not glass but rather opaque.
It doesn’t need to be re-developed to fix that. Just change the ownership to the city and the status of the main corridors to being streets (closed to vehicle traffic, presumably).
Knocking the whole thing down and rebuilding without roofs spanning the spaces between the buildings seems like an overreaction.