Posted on 07/23/2005 6:58:06 AM PDT by Cavalcabo
It's easy to be fooled by the Golden Triangle. Most Pittsburghers have been for 50 years. We've looked with great pride at Point State Park and Gateway Center, the tidy clump of corporate office buildings next to it. And without thinking too hard about why their never-changing open spaces are so empty of humans so much of the time, we naturally assume they are an example of successful urban planning. But they're not, as New York Times columnist John Tierney, a former Pittsburgher, so cruelly but accurately pointed out in a recent op-ed piece that embarrassed Pittsburgh by exposing it as a pioneer of eminent domain abuse. Gateway Center with its "bland corporate towers" and "empty plazas," Tierney wrote, is seen today as "hopelessly retrograde" by today's urban planners, who are desperately trying to re-create the organic street life of cities that earlier generations of planners killed with their grandiose projects and bulldozers.
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(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
The Baltimore planners put housing, employment, shopping, entertainment, and education cheek by jowl in the redesign. And now, the plazas of the Baltimore projects are filled with people at all hours when the businesses are open. That's success.
I watched the Baltimore Inner Harbor grow up, because I lived on a houseboat in the middle of it. And, I knew about the theories behind it because I then worked for the Baltimore City Planning Commission. LOL. (I still miss the houseboat -- 105 feet, with five bedrooms and a fireplace.)
Congressman Billybob
Very few of the huge government-controlled "redevelopment" projects have been successful in actually revitalizing areas.
Natural gentrification, spurred by free market incentives, OTOH, has been very effective in many areas. Perhaps the government could consider adding to the natural incentives through tax breaks in areas they wish to revitalize, and then just get out of the way.
When was the last time the Pittsburgh "Democratic political machine" did something that wasn't totally bass-ackwards?
Don't worry, Steeltown - you've got Sidney Crosby!
I'm sure now we will need to condemn the other half of the Hill to give Sidney a new place to skate.
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