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So basically, it has a been a "fail" for the artists. But the arts started a new Saturday walk to lure the real buyers. It just got way too crowded for the serious buyers.
The gallery storefronts are pretty much completely worthless as sales venues. Almost nobody buys fine art casually like that. But those who do buy fine art won't buy it unless the artist is represented a gallery with a public storefront. The art world is just plain bizarre.
Except that the bulk of pedestrian malls were refashioned downtown neighborhoods, accessible by public transit. Oh, well, thar blows another baseless, knee-jerk assumption ...
Really? All of our new ones are totally fake (ahem Bay Street in Emeryville, Santana Row in San Jose, Broadway Plaza in Walnut Creek - which is next to an actual old school small town main street). All of these are completely new development over the past 20 years fabricated to look like downtown or main street. Sacramento's is much the same actually. But less successful, since all of the neighboring suburbs have their own malls and strips malls with the same exact stores......
We have a fako pedestrian plaza think in downtown Oakland, called City Center. And it is a dead zone on the weekend. It is on top of transit etc...but almost all stores cater to workers during the week. ON the weekend it is pretty quiet, but a few cafes are doing well, and some innovative local businesses are working on making better development. But head over a 2 miles away, and we have a bunch of totally busy commercial districts where people are walking around, eating on the sidewalk and so on. It hasn't been closed to street traffic, I wouldn't call it a pedestrian plaza. (although my neighborhood commercial street does have a plaza, it used to be where the street car turned around...it is busy enough with musicians and bike parking. But it fronts a parking lot.
The only ped plazas I can think of that are more organic, in my region, are really Union Square in SF (different animal of course, the Embarcadero in SF, another different animal, as it is on the waterfront) and I guess technically Sproul Hall on Berkeley's campus.
I was talking about people owning more than one vehicle!
I don't think anyone mentioned any conspiracy to take cars away. Did they?
I think it was pretty obvious I was agreeing with nei's post about using his car only to leave town.
Not sure what you were talking about.
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Malloric already responded to this conspiracy language, so I'll just say, I agree with him.As far as this being something "new", Boulder, Colorado has been trying to get people out of their cars for at least the last 40 years.
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And who's this "we" Kemosabe? Is this some "us vs them" thing? That's how these posts come off.
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You know, it does your cause no good to make it sound like a "vast . . . conspiracy" against city residents.
IMO, discussions about urban planning are about improving the built environment for everyone.
I don't see it as an "us vs them" conspiracy plot. YMMV
Nice twisting of my words, there, jade. It's this "we" I object to. Like there's some "you" out there. But you knew that.
Pronoun usage can be pretty nebulous these days. What do you use for collective? You all?
Using something like "people like me." is pretty exclusive. I assumes no one agrees with me, which I don't think true.
We feels pretty inclusive in my book, if you self-identify with the "we." I used "we" to talk about subsidizing sprawl, and reading my posts, you know I am no fan of sprawl.
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