Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Downtown
Daley Plaza is successful? In what sense? Because on weekdays people cut across it rather than walk around it?
The ability to use it as a vacant lot where you can set up Bastille Day or Chicagoween or Christkindlmarkt is not what most urban designers would consider success in a plaza. Nor is having a few tables that nearby office workers will use out of desperation on a late spring day because nothing else is close enough. You could set up a stage and some folding chairs on a barge in Lake Calumet and the grandparents would still come and watch their granddaughters folk dancing.
A successful plaza is one that people are drawn to by choice, not because it's the shortest path from the subway to city hall. It's a rare urban design textbook that doesn't have Daley Plaza shown as "don't."
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Meanwhile, 150 North Riverside is the subject of the CAF Lunchtime Lecture on Wednesday, Jan. 8th.
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I understand what you're trying to do here. But come on man. Be real. Stand in Daley plaza for any amount of time during the summer, or any day when it's nice out, and tell me it again how it's not a highly successful urban space.