Quote:
Originally Posted by muppet
the easiest way is to actually walk through the traffic tunnel they once thought would only be for cars. The crowd of
people all doing the same thing shows the failure of the scheme.
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The problem is that we don't live in the 19th century anymore.
You can call these kinds of multi-level schemes a failure, but we still shop in shopping malls, live in large residential complexes. We drive to these places, and these places receive countless deliveries in large trucks. We're not going back to the city of small independent shopkeepers and little apartment buildings (except in places where this already exists).
So, if you have to design developments on a giant scale, and you have to handle large volumes of cars and trucks, then it makes sense to put the pedestrian realm on a higher level. If you don't, then the pedestrian experience is going to be miserable due to all the vehicles, and then those pedestrians will just start driving too.
Look at the so-called "lifestyle centers" in the US. They attempted to evoke traditional town centers, but since everybody was driving to these new centers, the developers had to give every scrap of open space over to parking. Gone are the plazas, courtyards, gardens, replaced by parking lots. At least with the multi-level developments, the design allows for public space to exist in significant quantity since it sits above all the needed parking and loading docks.
These new developments like the ones in China are a little less hubristic than the Barbican, as they don't require a full-scale demolition and redevelopment of the existing city to function.