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A comment on What Snow Tells Us About Creating Better Public Spaces. Parent comment

Re:What Snow Tells Us About Creating Better Public Spaces by maxerickson on Sunday February 09, 2014 @04:26PM (#7207331)
4 and 5 show some open space and later, by Gino's steak house a park is discussed (and sort of shows).

Looking at a map doesn't show a massive amount of parks, but there are several block sized spaces within about 1/2 mile.

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Re:What Snow Tells Us About Creating Better Public Spaces by saraid216 on Sunday February 09, 2014 @05:56PM (#7207787)
Ahhh. I see. Hey, it's a whole paragraph dedicated to pointing out how we might stop running people over.

I... That's honestly not what I want out of a discussion of public space. There was a really crappy, vapid, superficial, Buzzfeedesque article in The Atlantic Cities about "placemaking" during the Seahawks parade in Seattle that discussed public space more than this does.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2014/02/5-pla...

It's not really a public space when everyone is enclosed in a rocket-powered coffin communicating through flashing lights and loud honks. =X Actually, I wonder if I could get someone to make a play like that.

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Re:What Snow Tells Us About Creating Better Public Spaces by maxerickson on Sunday February 09, 2014 @08:32PM (#7208532)
A slightly more charitable view is that they are trying to actually make progress given the circumstances they have. Looking at their 'Advocacy' category, a previous post talked about closing sections of the same street to cars, but they do focus on streets (I suppose that is related to the street already being public property).
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Re:What Snow Tells Us About Creating Better Public Spaces by saraid216 on Sunday February 09, 2014 @10:52PM (#7209008)
Sounds like I'm being too harsh, then.

It's legitimate, in my view, to reclaim streets for the use of people without actually tearing up the asphalt and putting down grass. The issue is that the notion of a public space implies social encounters: friends are met and made, issues are raised and discussed, action is proposed and taken. A focus on how cars use roads whitewashes all of that because you can't do any of that from the seat of a moving car.

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