Quote:
Originally Posted by lrt's friend
At the moment, few will walk the length of Sparks Street, true. But, we are going to build the Central Library west of Bronson and Zibi, and the whole Lebreton project. Everything will change at that point. We will have a critical mass of attractions that will change pedestrian behaviour. I would rather funnel those pedestrians on to our pedestrian mall than scatter them on a variety of streets that have little hope of having much street presence, even less than Sparks. This is typical of well planned cities. I saw that last year in Copenhagen. A nice pedestrian mall attracted people and surrounding streets are pretty dead. This is what we want to happen, so that one street shines, rather than no streets, which will be the alternative.
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I'm reminded of Stockholm's Drottninggatan street, which is amazing year-round (and definitely just about the same as Sparks as far as weather). However, note that
100% of the leaseable, ground level space is rented to well-known shops and hundreds of bars and restaurants. People literally travel to stay for the weekend to just walk the street.
The street extends from parliament at the south to a park in the north, and is bordered by the financial district (central bank), movie theatres, a market, the central train station, etc. Oh sigh, what could have been in Ottawa had we just stayed the course 100 years ago.
Note in the following images:
-Year-round decoration (Sparks is ok for that)
-International Brands like Zara, the Body Shop, and H&M (one area has THREE H&M's side by side, lol... I guess that's Sweden for you) Has the Rideau Centre taken over control of these brands?
-Tunnelbana Entrances dotted along the entire length of the street.
-Swedish Style.
Here's a few photos for inspiration:
http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/19c4b4dc19...olm-d4xr76.jpg
https://i0.wp.com/travellingboomer.c...kholm-mall.jpg
http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/5933bdcd3b...den-a1kper.jpg
http://www.totallystockholm.se/wp-co...gatan_web2.jpg
I guess what we're missing is density of commercial business:
http://storage.ottawasun.com/v1/dyna....jpg?size=520x
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