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  #17821  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2017, 12:06 PM
BrianTH BrianTH is offline
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Chatham does indeed have a pretty campus:



Of course campuses have an annoying habit of breaking up the urban fabric and becoming no-go zones for outsiders, but grading on a curve I would say Point Park has a decent campus too in that it is about as well-integrated into Downtown as possible. In an urban setting I consider that a virtue.

Last edited by BrianTH; Jan 17, 2017 at 12:43 PM.
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  #17822  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2017, 2:02 PM
highlander206 highlander206 is offline
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
I'm not trying to say I'm a fan of CMU's campus, but is any campus in Pittsburgh better? Duquense's campus is a horror show. Pitt and Point Park don't really qualify as coherent campuses. Carlow's campus is tiny. Maybe Chatham? I really haven't spent time on their campus, but it seems pretty bucolic.
I agree with you. Thinking about how other campuses for schools in the area look, I have a hard time seeing CMU as much worse. Though you can make an argument that other schools have better buildings than CMU IMO. As somreone who spent a lot of time there, I have never found Duquesne's campus to be horrible (though the dorms admittedly are) and actually liked how cut off it was from other places.
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  #17823  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2017, 2:17 PM
eschaton eschaton is online now
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Originally Posted by highlander206 View Post
I agree with you. Thinking about how other campuses for schools in the area look, I have a hard time seeing CMU as much worse. Though you can make an argument that other schools have better buildings than CMU IMO. As someone who spent a lot of time there, I have never found Duquesne's campus to be horrible (though the dorms admittedly are) and actually liked how cut off it was from other places.
I dunno. Obviously I didn't go there, but Duquense's campus seems to fail as a concept both because the buildings are all over the place. At least CMU tries to have a coherent color scheme. The buildings are sort of placed randomly within the campus as well, without much thought as to how they relate to one another in terms of open space.

But really, I think most U.S. campuses are constructed terribly. Some old the old Ives, like Harvard and Yale, have impressive campuses, but for the most part American campuses (except when they are part of an already existing urban fabric) do not construct their campus cores with pedestrians in mind enough, putting large swathes of largely useless green space on the campus where there is no good reason to have them.
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  #17824  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2017, 2:46 PM
dfiler dfiler is offline
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CMU is incredibly pedestrian friendly once within the campus. Though the 5 lanes of Forbes Avenue running through campus (or what used to be the edge of campus) is rather hard to deal with. But there's hope for that...

The Piper: Upcoming Changes to Forbes Avenue Revealed (Saturday, October 1, 2016)
http://www.cmu.edu/piper/stories/201...ment-plan.html

Slides from the PennDOT/CMU/WCA presentation: (They also detail changes on Forbes Ave all the way through Oakland)
http://pedestrianstudy.otmapgh.org/d...2016-08-31.pdf

I really hope it happens as it would be quite transformative for the city!

But rather than the pedestrian experience, I think criticism is more appropriately directed at the style/beauty/architecture of buildings at CMU. I think it is an average campus by those metrics but certainly others find it ugly.
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  #17825  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2017, 3:14 PM
eschaton eschaton is online now
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What I mean regarding campus walkability is complicated, but I'll try to explain.

Of course many college campuses are pedestrian focused by default, generally having the highest level of pedestrian commuters in the country. But they tend to fail in a few notable ways. I'm not singling out CMU here, given I don't know that much about it, but the notable flaws are:

Lack of mixed use: Obviously by national standards, college campuses are pretty mixed use. But they generally tend to mirror the U.S. commuter norms in miniature. Buildings are usually intended towards a single use such as academic, administrative, or residential. Worse still, the general paradigm is to put the academic/administrative buildings in the core, and to put the residential functions on the edge as "quasi-suburbs" - a model which in many cases can stretch the walking commute out to a an uncomfortable 15-20 minutes or more. There is no solid reason why the campus functions couldn't be interspersed - why you couldn't even put some dorm rooms directly on top of academic buildings.

Bad use of open space: It makes solid sense to have a "park" in the core of the campus to serve as a social focal point and allow for outdoor events. But campuses outside of an urban setting often waste a lot of space on setbacks which are not highly used - glorified "lawns" which only serve to make walking commutes longer. Given many academic buildings either front only on pedestrian walkways or very low-traffic service roads, there is no reason for them to have anything other than zero setback from the curb, which would allow for a lot more development in the core of the campus.
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  #17826  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2017, 3:15 PM
BrianTH BrianTH is offline
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Originally Posted by dfiler View Post
CMU is incredibly pedestrian friendly once within the campus.
I guess that depends on what you mean by "pedestrian friendly". There aren't a lot of cars, so that's good. Otherwise, though, you have a lot of overly-large open spaces, very long paths, large set-backs, unwelcoming facades, buildings not at a "human scale", and so on. All of that is contributing to communicate to pedestrians, "Unless you have official business here, you don't belong in this space."

To be fair, as previously noted this is a common problem among campuses. But CMU's campus is an unfortunately good example.

For contrast, Point Park might have cars you have to watch out for, although most of that side of Downtown is actually pretty sleepy in terms of car traffic. Otherwise, I would suggest it generally scores as much more pedestrian friendly, largely because it is mostly made up of historic commercial buildings fronting right on the sidewalk.

Interestingly, I'd say the biggest "bust" in Point Park from that standpoint is the waterfall parklet (I think they call it "Village Park") at the corner of Wood and BoA. Currently it is the most traditional college-campusy space they have, and it again communicates in a variety of ways to pedestrians that they don't belong there. Unfortunately, I strongly suspect it will soon be rivaled by the new student theater complex.
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  #17827  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2017, 3:33 PM
eschaton eschaton is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianTH View Post
I guess that depends on what you mean by "pedestrian friendly". There aren't a lot of cars, so that's good. Otherwise, though, you have a lot of overly-large open spaces, very long paths, large set-backs, unwelcoming facades, buildings not at a "human scale", and so on. All of that is contributing to communicate to pedestrians, "Unless you have official business here, you don't belong in this space."
It's worth mentioning though that although the "classic" college campus had issues as well, bad campus design became rampant in large part because the era of a massive uptick in college enrollment - the 1960s and 1970s - happened to coincide with the worst period for urban design. For much the same reason, essentially every college campus in the country has some sort of brutalist monstrosity as well.

Come to think of it, the bad building layout may have a lot to do with the general paradigms of "starchitecture" - along with the power of the alumni who fund the buildings. Each building is all too often as an individual work of art which needs its own "negative space" surrounding it, rather than part of an existing urban fabric.
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  #17828  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2017, 3:49 PM
BrianTH BrianTH is offline
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We're also still building universities as variations on either monasteries or Jefferson's "academical village". That isn't helping, as these visions embody the notion of the university as an intellectual community set apart from the outside world (and grubby outsiders).

Really, there is no particular reason an urban university campus couldn't look just like a normal section of a city. Public uses on the ground floors, exclusive university uses on the upper floors, and general good urban planning principles applied throughout.
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  #17829  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2017, 4:35 PM
dfiler dfiler is offline
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I agree with some of those sentiments but would frame the criticism under a term other than "pedestrian friendly". That term makes me think primarily of whether infrastructure is designed for pedestrian needs or non-pedestrian (automobile) needs. Perhaps "human scaled" is a better term for that topic. No matter term though, it is an important and interesting topic. Thanks for the discussion!

I also agree that large spaces are generally less welcoming; that the massive columns of the Purnell and University Centers aren't welcoming at a human scale. Those buildings are my least favorite architecture on campus. Normally I'm a fan of imposing architecture such as brutalism, like ween hall. But the massive, unbroken collonades of Purnell and the UC are proportioned poorly to the rest of those buildings. A few more stories on top and they wouldn't seem so out of place.

Architecture of the those buildings asside, the type of open space that these colonades border is key to a well designed urban campus. Events and summer activities rely on the grass mall. On nice days it is great to walk between classes outdoors. Emerging into the sunshine of a wide open space is wonderful. In inclement weather, there is a network of connected buildings, tunnels, bridges and covered sidewalks to move around campus. Those colonades are appreciated in the rain or scorching summer sun.

The mall is designed for large activities and for enjoying wide open space. Though while less obvious, the experience of being at CMU is more about the personal spaces in and between the buildings. Both types of environments are needed on campus. With that said, I would like to see the mall changed but preserved as open space.
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  #17830  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2017, 8:50 PM
eschaton eschaton is online now
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I understand that typically we use "pedestrian-friendly" to mean "not a space for cars" but there is more to it than that.

To give an extreme example, consider Empire State Plaza in Albany.



There's a huge open marble plaza where people can wander about. But the flat expanse is so open and soulless that it is reported as being somewhat frightening to traverse by many, and is generally crossed on foot as rapidly as possible, with few people lingering.
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  #17831  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2017, 9:41 PM
BrianTH BrianTH is offline
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Certainly in modern urban planning, there is a lot of attention being paid these days to not only keeping pedestrians physically safe in fact, but also to making them actually feel safe and welcome.
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  #17832  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2017, 10:08 PM
BrianTH BrianTH is offline
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The Pennley Park South developers are appealing the Planning Commission rejection of their plan to state court:

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/ci...s/201701170160

I don't know what sort of case they have under the applicable zoning, and I always think it is a bit risky to try to sue your way to getting a project like this done.
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  #17833  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2017, 1:34 PM
BrianTH BrianTH is offline
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Harris Grill is opening a new location in the closed Tavern 245 location Downtown:

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburg...-downtown.html

Not the biggest news, but Harris Grill is a bit of an institution (in fact, my wife and I met there many years ago).
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  #17834  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2017, 2:41 PM
eschaton eschaton is online now
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If we're talking about small news, I saw that Commonwealth Press is moving to Allentown. I'm not surprised they have to move, since there will be that new apartment building going where they are currently located. But this will just add to the growing buzz around Allentown as the next place experiencing gentrification-related spillover in businesses from South Side.
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  #17835  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2017, 2:46 PM
BrianTH BrianTH is offline
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Cool for Allentown! Here's the building:



I believe it is prominently seen from the T, so hopefully it will get a little bit of a makeover.
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  #17836  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2017, 2:57 PM
BrianTH BrianTH is offline
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Nice roundup of activity in The Strip, with lots of cool photos:

http://www.nextpittsburgh.com/curren...trip-district/

Supposedly the Produce Terminal and facing warehouse project might begin in the third quarter of this year.
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  #17837  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2017, 3:34 PM
Brentsters Brentsters is offline
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Is the city still trying to get the school board to approve the TIF or is that officially a no go?
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  #17838  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2017, 8:05 PM
BrianTH BrianTH is offline
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Oxford has sold the Frank & Seder building at 441 Smithfield to a Cleveland developer, Stark Enterprises:

http://www.post-gazette.com/business...s/201701180171

Obviously this means Oxford won't be building a skyscraper there, and according to the article, Stark is planning to renovate the building, possibly with retail on the first floor and residences and/or offices on the upper-floors.

Which is fine with me, actually.

Edit: Here are some renderings from when Oxford was considering a renovation:




Last edited by BrianTH; Jan 18, 2017 at 8:23 PM.
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  #17839  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2017, 11:08 PM
themaguffin themaguffin is offline
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Has the downtown office market softened so much that virtually nothing significant is happening? Granted, it wasn't really hot, but a few years ago, it seemed like a few moderate towers were in discussion, including the Oxford one and all the talked has died... or is this case, the actual plans.
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  #17840  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2017, 11:36 PM
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Austinlee Austinlee is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianTH View Post
Oxford has sold the Frank & Seder building at 441 Smithfield to a Cleveland developer, Stark Enterprises:

http://www.post-gazette.com/business...s/201701180171

Obviously this means Oxford won't be building a skyscraper there, and according to the article, Stark is planning to renovate the building, possibly with retail on the first floor and residences and/or offices on the upper-floors.

Which is fine with me, actually.

Edit: Here are some renderings from when Oxford was considering a renovation:



I was fine with a nice historic renovation of this building OR a well designed new highrise for additional urban canyon goodness on Smithfield Street. Hopefully the market is strong enough for one of these ideas to pan out sooner rather than later.






Quote:
Originally Posted by themaguffin View Post
Has the downtown office market softened so much that virtually nothing significant is happening? Granted, it wasn't really hot, but a few years ago, it seemed like a few moderate towers were in discussion, including the Oxford one and all the talked has died... or is this case, the actual plans.
That continues to be the problem for any medium to large projects to get off the ground - The developers NEED an anchor tenant to meet the commercial lending requirements which say require something like - "Needs to have 10-20% solid leasing in place before construction begins".
The modern Burns & Scalo proposal on Ft Duquense Blvd couldn't find an anchor tenant, the Northshore II or whatever it's called is finally moving forward because they did get an anchor lease from SAP.
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