Quote:
Originally Posted by HX_Guy
"I cannot stand the downtown campus. Everything mentioned in the article is on par with how many students feel. I have already taken 2 classes downtown and I despised every minute of it. Traffic is terrible, there is no where to eat, and the panhandling bums are everywhere. At least I am in grad school and I can go back home after class but I really feel sorry for the poor underclassmen that actually live down there. With all the extra $s ASU keeps getting from these tuition hikes its seems like they could provide a little more downtown to try and make the place more livable. Putting $s into downtown development would be a better use of those extra tuition $s instead of buying out Dirk Diggler's coaching contract, which they should not have needed to do if they hadnt screwed up and given him an extension in the first place. Way to go ASU!"
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I guess COP and ASU didn't tell the students that they're the ones who are supposed to make downtown lively. We've tried everything to turn it around: sports, sports' bars, convention center/hotels, mixed-use projects (Arizona Center) - every lollapalooza project we could conjure. But we didn't put feet on the sidewalks because ultimately people want more than venues. They want a real city.
Pardon my arrogance, but here's Soleri's Rule #4: it's ALWAYS better to have existing urbanism than the new pretend kind. Nothing replaces old buildings, real-world uses, organic growth, and complex social ecologies.