Charles St GRT terminal redevelopment

[ijmorlan]

In any case, Tom is right, that only supports the idea that retail should be located on the outside...which is absolutely a given--malls die downtown.

Not true in Europe, from what I understand, e.g.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galeries_R...int-Hubert

I suspect, however, that the key is that the mall needs to be on the way to other places, not something one has to seek out. This would also explain why the sidewalks on King St., for example, are desireable retail locations: they’re on the way.

By contrast, the King Centre (or whatever it was called), was a dead-end off King St. if I remember correctly: if you went in the front door, you were coming back out the same door later on. The same layout would have had trouble attracting visitors if it had been a dead-end laneway off King St. rather than an enclosed mall. Or so I suppose.

At our train station, as you say most of the traffic will be outside, so it probably makes sense to design the retail more or less as if there wasn’t a train station. Quite different from a massive transit hub like Union Station which has immense traffic flows inside.