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Oklahoma City has a nice tunnel system as well as a few sky bridges connecting buildings. By using a combination of the tunnels and sky bridges you can get pretty much all across downtown.
BUT WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO? The weather is never so miserable in OKC (or most american cities) to prevent you from walking down the street. Seriously, you C-D people are always lamenting the lack of urban street life downtown in US cities and here you go celebrating something totally anti-pedestrian. I don't get it.
BUT WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO? The weather is never so miserable in OKC (or most american cities) to prevent you from walking down the street. Seriously, you C-D people are always lamenting the lack of urban street life downtown in US cities and here you go celebrating something totally anti-pedestrian. I don't get it.
In many ways I completely agree - Minneapolis (winter) or Houston (summer) probably have more need/beneficial aspects as the outdoors can be extreme but overall Yes I agree this is in concept potentially anti vibrant, almost more like a mall placed under or over the city.
I know in my city they are mostly used for access to commuter rail and subways; and at times in inclement weather as an alternative which may make sense for the winters in Minneapolis and summers in Houston in that vain.
My question would be are these more worker related to facilitate movements or are they built to be more of part of the urban fabric, where the people congregate during not only work hours but evenings and weekends too.
I don't have a picture or a map, but the Des Moines skywalk system is around 4 miles long, contains oveer 150 stores, and connects over 30 square blocks of the downtown area. It's the largest in the USA outside the Twin Cities.
Their downtown is unusually large and dense for a city its size, and over 80,000 people work each weekday in the downtown core's 12,000,000 sf of office space. Their class A office space occupancy has held up extremely well during the downturn - being 95% occupied in the CBD as of the end of 2009. The skywalk system comes in handy when it's very hot or cold outside.
Last edited by Chicago60614; 09-22-2010 at 03:34 PM..
My city of Seattle has only a couple of skywalks - weather is too mild to warrant too many, but there are some tunnels linking a few of the major office towers downtown, as well as the LINK light rail system which runs completely underground through downtown.
Spokane, WA has a fairly extensive skywalk system with about 16 blocks interconnected. Eastern Washington's harsher winters and summers warrant it moreso than Seattle.
Location: Austin, TX/Chicago, IL/Houston, TX/Washington, DC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by emcee squared
Alas, I don't live in Chicago.
That needs to be changed.
By the way, I knew the map was outdated as hell, I literally had to ask myself, "why cant I remember the Chicago network being this large before?" Mehh but its always hard finding maps and pictures of specific things for Chicago.
Thanks grapico for having the updated map for the thread. And nice pictures too. Architecturally Chicago just has everything you could possibly want right then and there.
My city of Seattle has only a couple of skywalks - weather is too mild to warrant too many, but there are some tunnels linking a few of the major office towers downtown, as well as the LINK light rail system which runs completely underground through downtown.
Spokane, WA has a fairly extensive skywalk system with about 16 blocks interconnected. Eastern Washington's harsher winters and summers warrant it moreso than Seattle.
I thought it was awesome, but I don't think many people would consider the weather in Seattle mild
By the way, I knew the map was outdated as hell, I literally had to ask myself, "why cant I remember the Chicago network being this large before?" Mehh but its always hard finding maps and pictures of specific things for Chicago.
Thanks grapico for having the updated map for the thread. And nice pictures too. Architecturally Chicago just has everything you could possibly want right then and there.
Yeah, yeah. I've visited tons of times and if there would be a place I'd move to, it would be Chicago. I'm too much of a midwesterner to go anywhere else
I like how in some of Houston's literature for tourists it lists the Houston tunnels as something "to see". In reality, if you work/live downtown, they're pretty dang convenient but by no means are they "cool"....at least in my eyes. When I started living downtown/working downtown, I got lost in them so many times :-(
I'd go in one entrance and THINK I was going in the right direction and end up like 10 blocks away from where I wanted to be...even with a map :-(
Gotta admit though, there are some sweet restaurants down there and it sure beats walking street level in the summer...especially w/ a shirt and tie on...
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