Quote:
Originally Posted by ChiPhi
I suppose they do have all those little retail areas and the market will be nice, but the whole area still feels sterile every time I'm in there. The foot traffic feels so much less than it should be given the number of residents. It is a vertical suburb imo. Hopefully kids walking to and from school will bring some life to the neighborhood. The big problem is the way it is chopped off from the offices nearby (BCBS, Aon et al.) by the sunken park. And all the retail faces inward if I remember correctly instead of meeting the surrounding high traffic streets. I think until that changes LSE will continue to feel like a poorly planned sprawl suburb built upwards instead of outwards. If the park and cul-de-sac become as high traffic as Randolph, Wacker (obviously foot traffic on these streets drops precipitously as one moves east), Lake, Columbus because of a school that'd be great.
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^ The Mariano's has a pedestrian connection to Randolph st, and in fact you will see a lot of pedestrians coming into the store from outside the neighborhood. Also, I actually don't think LSE has really achieved its goal density yet. You still have a half dozen or so highrises that have yet to be built. Given the decent amount of pedestrian activity we have already, I think it will be a pretty vibrant neighborhood when all is said and done.
I also think that LSE is a great example of a successful urban neighborhood that
does not fall into the Jane Jacobs/street grid-esque Greenwich Village, Manhattan model that give so many urbanists in our generation such a hard on. Everybody worships New York so much in part because it is the New York
brand of urbanism that is automatically considered kosher to everyone. More power to cities that are trying to create their own mold.