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Originally Posted by Private Dick
It's not really about balconies being there, but rather about people being there (and not a few blocks away or across the street).
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I have to admit, I don't understand that parenthetical at all. Thinking about the cool walkable urban areas I know about, I'm not even sure what was directly above all those ground level amenities, and it doesn't seem like a problem for people to walk across the street or to the next block to go to a restaurant, club, or so on.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say the whole point of living in a vibrant walkable urban area is to make it easy get out of your own building and have a variety of choices of fun stuff to do.
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You just can't create a vibrant waterfront when you dedicate the majority of it to office space -- and that's what that SSW riverfront basically is/will be. That entire westernmost tract of prime waterfront property to become a squat, short 6-story building? To go along with more office buildings and a hotel with nothing on the ground floor. Yuck. Why not two slim 10-15 story apartment buildings instead? They'd fill up quick and dramatically change the SSW area from chintzy chainy land to desirable waterfront marina living locale.
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So you have at least four variables here: use, ground floor treatment, scale, and design quality. I certainly think ground floor treatment matters. I think scale can matter, although I think that is more a density issue than a height issue per se, and blocky six-story buildings can in fact achieve enough density for vibrant neighborhoods. Design quality can mean a lot of different things, but depending on your desired demographic I can see it mattering.
But basically, the thing I am questioning is whether use matters once you have controlled for these other things. Of course you wouldn't want an area to be all office, but it does seem desirable to have mixed use, including healthy amounts of both residential and office, for a variety of reasons. And if that is true, then I really still don't see why it actually matters if a given riverfront building is office and the building across the street is residential, or vice versa.
If instead what you are saying is the SSW would be different if it was a high-end 15-story area rather than a middle-market 6-story area . . . well sure, but that is about something different than which specific parcels are office and which residential.
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Waterfront development failure. It should be rather embarrassing that a German beer hall chain has done the best job of integrating into the waterfront environment and creating a vibrant atmosphere. But good for Hofbrauhaus.
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As an aside, I think there has long been a bit of an overcorrection in certain circles when it comes to our riverfront areas. Of course no longer devoting them exclusively to dirty industrial uses is welcome. On the other hand, this is not Miami Beach or the French Riviera we are talking about. For most people at most times, the rivers themselves are not much of an attraction (people don't want to swim in them, don't want to smell that "great river air", don't particularly care about ogling coal barges, and so on). Rather, the most notable nice thing about being on the riverfronts is usually the unimpeded view of the stuff on the other side of the river, but often you can get that same view (or better) from an upper floor of a building off the river, or from one of the slopes near the river.
Accordingly, I think it is actually rather fitting that our riverfronts are being devoted largely to parks and trails. That is good water management, and also makes use of the relatively level riverfronts for non-car transportation, and finally makes those nice views readily accessible on demand for free. But to the extent people keep imagining parts of Pittsburgh's riverfronts resembling Navy Pier in the future, I think they are really overestimating what sort of value people will place simply on being next to a river.
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