The Banality of Pedestrian Malls

This is an aside titled 'The Banality of Pedestrian Malls' dated 12/29/08

Brand Avenue on the banality of Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace, owned by a company on the verge of bankruptcy. It could very well be a skyscraper development in ten years. But will Bostonians care? More from The Boston Globe’s Robert Campbell “I can’t help wondering whether what we’re hearing in all this is the tolling bells of an era that is ending. Let’s go back to Faneuil Hall Marketplace. It opened back in the bicentennial year of 1976, in a very different era. Public life, street life, was moribund in Boston….But the Marketplace was a huge and instant hit, drawing more visitors in its first year than Disneyland… People, it turned out, were starved for the experience of city life, even a slightly ersatz experience.” How curious that urban pedestrian walks grow tedious and commercial. See also: Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Pricey real estate?

Posted by Joanne on Dec. 29, 2008

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