Eyes on Milwaukee
Northwestern Mutual Wins Key Vote To Close Cass Street
But not without derision, and the suggestion to create an open-air passageway for the public.
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But not without derision, and the suggestion to create an open-air passageway for the public. Back to the full article.
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In the annual world’s most livable city ratings, much is made
of the absence of friction.
The frustration of traffic congestion is friction.
Milwaukee has a long rap sheet of creating more places to go and fewer ways to get there (street closures).
Besides disrupting traffic flows, closures make life harder for police, fire, and rescue efforts. Not to mention the people these agencies are trying to help. And then there is traffic routing around construction, accidents, events etc.
Sooo…. What new events are we going to get, and how will they
contribute to our civic betterment?
This project involves vacating and privatizing yet-another public street in Milwaukee.
Public officials, urbanists and anyone who cares about downtowns and public spaces, would do well to consider:
Are we trying to attract suburbanites to Downtown by creating de-facto “gated campuses” where workers and visitors can be sure of interacting ONLY with self-selected others?
Downtown Milwaukee is sometimes citied as “lacking vibrancy” by wide-ranging voices. Are projects, including this one, being evaluated for how they will make Downtown even less welcoming and less inclusive?
As urban spaces tell people, whether overtly, or through various cues, that only certain people belong in that space, that space serves to support separation rather than community. That can be true even when it remains, at least on paper, a “public space.”
Jane Jacobs wrote about how “Downtowns are for people.” The Devil is in the details.
@Virginia Small –
“Are we trying to attract suburbanites to Downtown by creating de-facto “gated campuses” where workers and visitors can be sure of interacting ONLY with self-selected others?”
You hit the nail on the head. Many downtown employees from the suburbs refuse to leave their office buildings other than to get to their cars. They are too afraid to even go out to lunch. Their entire world view is the right-wing hate/fear propaganda universe.