Quote:
Originally Posted by aaron38
I disagree, it detracted from the public sense. A rotunda is not a mall, and a mall is not a rotunda. Retail space is not public. Can’t have protests and speeches behind an active counter. Have to pick one. And I don’t see anything in this rehab that addresses that fundamental flaw.
It’s the same flaw the Obama Library is repeating in Jackson Park. Planned single use is no longer public, no matter what the PR team says.
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Go to any well-used central square or piazza in Europe and the perimeter will be ringed with shops and restaurants, sometimes spilling out into sidewalk cafes. There's no reason civic purposes can't coexist with commerce. In fact, when you get the occasional single-use government plaza in an Euro city (often in a modernist complex) it feels weird and sterile without retail.
The reason a shopping mall in the suburbs can't be the same way is that it isn't publicly-owned. The landlord will allow whatever activities maximize their profits and they will ban whatever reduces their profits. It's their space, after all. Thompson Center is owned by the state, so its building managers are accountable to the public and they don't have the same profit motive.
It's not just "political" activities either per se - I have a vivid memory of a Black gospel choir performing in the Thompson Center for lunch crowds. Where else downtown would that ever happen? Thompson Center isn't explicitly a Black space, but it's definitely a place where Black people and Black culture are allowed in the door, along with that of Latinos and other minority groups.