Definitely everything associated with the current stadium paradigm will die off. A stadium cannot drive a successful urban neighborhood. Cite Fenway and Wrigley all you want, but Kenmore Square and Wrigleyville are bustling neighborhoods because tons of people live there and patronize the bars and restaurants even when it's not game day. Any attempt to manufacture some kind of entertainment district around a stadium to make it "more urban" will fail.
This is not even getting into the whole public financing issue, or the money-grubbing way in which professional teams betray their respective cities by threatening to move unless they get Subsidy X or Preferential Treatment Y.
I prefer the European model for stadiums: stick it in a big park and provide really good transit and pedestrian connections with limited parking nearby. Don't worry about "integrating into the city". Soldier Field is relatively good in this respect; so are most Division I football stadiums.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 10023
An attempt at some real examples:
- Adaptation of old infrastructure for open space (e.g., the High Line, the elevated rail line in Chicago, or efforts to cover rail lines or roadways with parkland). I love it, as I'm sure we all do, but you do have to wonder what happens when these things get old and fall into disuse. It's a lot harder to maintain something like the High Line than any old patch of grass.
... more to come...
|
Definitely this is a huge fad, although again, repurposing the infrastructure of an earlier generation has been going on for centuries - see Rome. For an idea of what the High Line will eventually look like, check out the Promenade Plantee in Paris (the first viaduct park, opened in 1993). It's still a busy park, but there are weedy areas, broken fountains, missing/damaged benches, etc.
The Chicago and Philly projects will probably be more resilient than the first two, benefiting from more durable viaducts and far more sustainable, simple landscaping. Since both the Bloomingdale and Reading viaducts are solid-fill, it's actually
not substantially harder to maintain the elevated landscape than a typical urban park.