L'idée de la piétonisation a fait son chemin à Montréal

[Cataclaw]

The thing you seem to forget Cat is that Ste-Catherine is a major west - east street. Remove it and René-Lévesque and Sherbrooke will be stuck in never ending traffic jams.

 

Remove cars from ste-Catherine, and it might be fine and dandy for the stores during the 5 months of nice weather we get in this city, but ask the store owners if they would like the street ot be closed off to cars in december, January, February, March and April. It will surely kill off all the shops!

 

By the way, the pictures you showed us seem to be from China or Japan, in which case the populations of the cities in those countries is soooo much bigger than our city, i'm not sure they can actually be used as comparables!?

 

It's intensely counter-intuitive, but closing roads in certain situations often leads to less traffic. In the case of Ste-Cath, i don't think it would reduce traffic, but i don't think it would lead to a significant increase either.

 

Again, i have to ask you, and return to my arguments in my last two posts: Why do you think shops would be killed off in the winter if the street was pedestrianized? The same truths for summer hold in the winter.

 

Actually, aside from the first picture, all the others are of a comparable or smaller population than us. In fact.. one of the pictures IS us. Before last one is Prince Arthur.

[acpnc]

Forgive me for replying in english but i'm in a hurry and i don't have the patience right now to do alt-223 to create an "é" every time there's an accent. Sigh... i need to buy a french keyboard!!

 

Ok. Here's the assumption you guys are making. Let's follow your logic:

If cars are removed from Sainte-Catherine street, there will be a reduction in consumers and pedestrians, therefore people go to Sainte-Catherine street partly because you can drive your car there.

 

But how many people walking on Sainte-Catherine, shopping and browsing, got there by car and parked on the street? In fairness, a bunch, to be sure. Just look at all those parallel-parked cars on the sides. But when you consider the volume of people on that street and the number of cars, the math doesn't lie. Purely and simply, most people on Sainte-Catherine street got there by parking somewhere else and walking to the street, taking the metro, taking the bus, taking a bike, taking a bixi, or simply walking. In fact just by eyeballing it, i'd wager that over 85% of people walking on Sainte-Catherine street doing a little shopping or sight seeing, didn't drive on the street or park on it. Furthermore, a large portion of cars parked on Sainte-Catherine probably don't have business on that street to begin with, maybe they needed to go to René-Lévesque but found parking on Ste-Cath first. That probably bumps up our percentage to 90%+.

 

Now.. if the street is transformed into a pedestrian mall for some of its length, it's important to consider the "build it and they will come" phenomenon. I would compare a Ste-Cath mall to the High Line park in New York City. A long, linear park that is bustling with people at all hours of the day. If Sainte-Catherine is beautified, with fountains, benches, trees, plants, monuments, sculptures, lighting displays and what not, it'll become an extremely interesting area and end up attracting a lot of people. The 10% lost will be made up quickly and a surplus of visitors almost guaranteed.

 

Could you imagine Ste-Catherine resembling the Pearl street mall in Boulder, CO? And guess what, Pearl street is like the main street of Boulder (their Sainte-Catherine). It worked there.. why not here?

 

Finally, we don't need to make the mall on the entire length of Sainte-Catherine. Ideally i'd go for Guy--Saint-Laurent, but i'd settle for a quarter of that to start with.

 

The idea that removing cars somehow removes people is simply false.

 

I know Malek will storm in here "blah blah cars blah blah blah cars cars blah blah" but it's just not true. Times Square turned itself into a pedestrian mall on half its side, removing all traffic on 7th avenue. The result has been extraordinary. Times Square has seen an increase in activity and people have been nearly unanimous in giving praise for the project.

 

We tried it in the village and it worked. It works everywhere else in the world. Why would Montreal be different?

 

Sainte-Catherine is the heart of Montreal, it's a destination, not a transit corridor. Through traffic has René-Lévesque, or better yet, the Ville-Marie Expressway. People don't drive around to their destination on Sainte-Catherine and then see "oh look, the iStore, i didn't know that was here, i'll just stop and buy an iPhone."

 

 

I've been to bars, clubs, restaurants, coffee shops, strip clubs, stores and banks on Sainte-Catherine. I've spent hundreds if not thousands of hours there. I've spent more money on that street than any other. (Okay, maybe tied with Saint-Laurent)

 

And I've never once parked on the street itself.

 

I've studied this stuff in University for years now, and i apologize if this comes off as a tad bit arrogant, but trust me on this one guys: pedestrian malls work. I know this. Some visual proof:

 

 

 

 

 

 

J'approuve à 100% ton commentaire et je serais vraiment curieux de savoir combien de gens sur le nombre stationnent sur Ste-Catherine pour du magasinage.

 

Améliorer la fluidité sur les autres rues est-ouest avec notamment une bonne synchronisation des feux, pourrait aider à compenser l'absence de circulation sur Ste-Catherine. On permet toutefois le transport en commun avec des véhicules adaptés, une flotte de mini-bus par exemple et bien sûr les taxis. Comme je disais précédemment à l'instar de la rue Oxford à Londres. Ou on fait une piétonnisation complète en adaptant les transports en conséquence.

 

L'important est de redonner la ville aux piétons dans la mesure du possible en rendant l'expérience urbaine plus agréable et plus conviviale. La rue Ste-Catherine jouit d'un fort achalandage même en hiver et en dépit des nombreux centres d'achats souterrains à proximité.

 

Cela prouve que les gens aime être à l'air libre et particulièrement quand la météo est favorable. Ne reste qu'à aménager les espaces pour plus de verdure, de fontaines, terrasses et autres espaces de repos ou d'échanges. On pourrait même mettre les artistes dans le coup en créant une sorte de musée d'art contemporain à ciel ouvert tout le long du parcours.

 

On peut dire que l'essentiel de la clientèle de jour vient principalement des nombreux bureaux tout autour, des touristes et des résidents qui habitent à proximité. On a ici un bassin de centaines de milliers de passants qui seraient encore plus nombreux si la rue était plus agréable, moins bruyante et moins polluée. Le soir venu c'est une autre clientèle qui à son tour fréquenterait les boutiques encore ouvertes, les terrasses, restos et bars installés en plus grand nombre.

 

L'élément principal du succès d'une rue piétonnière est de retenir le client potentiel le plus longtemps possible en lui offrant toute une gammes d'expérience diverses. Lui permettre de flâner en ayant le plaisir de profiter de la rue comme d'une destination en soi. C'est ce qui explique les bons résultats de la partie est de la rue et je ne vois pas pourquoi on ne pourrait pas adapter la partie ouest à quelque chose qui lui ressemble.

 

De toute façon c'est une tendance lourde que l'on retrouve partout dans le monde et Montréal devra suivre pour demeurer compétitive. Il y a eu de la résistance quand on a interdit de fumer dans les bars et restos, on a prédit la ruine des commerçants. Et pourtant tout le monde s'en porte mieux et les gens ont adapté leur habitudes aux nouvelles réalités.

 

Ce sera la même chose dans ce dossier qui peut être géré par étapes, par phases, en corrigeant à mesure les différents problèmes qui pourraient se poser. En ce qui me concerne ce serait la seule raison qui me ferait sortir de ma banlieue: profiter d'un bain de foule où le magasinage n'est qu'une des nombreuses activités proposées. Je stationnerais, comme je le fais déjà près d'un métro à Laval ou au nord de la ville et jouerais au touriste pour le simple plaisir de profiter d'une ville que j'adore et aimerais encore davantage.

[Habsfan]

Why do you think shops would be killed off in the winter if the street was pedestrianized?

 

Who wants to walk around in 2 feet of snow or 6 inches of dirty slush in -20 degree weather for a couple of hours of shopping?? Alot of people will drive to the area, go buy what they need and then hop back into their cars and go. You close off Ste-Catherine to cars, and people will find other alternatives!

 

Belive it or not, but I sometimes go downtown on week-ends and week-nights to do some shopping. I park my car close by, buy what I need and take off. With Ste-Catherine close to traffic, i would no longer take the chance of being stuck on R-L or Sherbrooke in traffic, and would do ALL my shopping at Dix30!!

 

Oh and by the way, I also took a few Urban planning as well as transportation geography classes at Concordia. I'm not convinced that all they taught us was acurate and undebatable!

[francely57]

Again, i have to ask you, and return to my arguments in my last two posts: Why do you think shops would be killed off in the winter if the street was pedestrianized? The same truths for summer hold in the winter.

 

Ste-Catherine ne fonctionne pas de la même façon quand il fait beau ou pas beau.

 

C'est vrai qu'il y a très peu de monde à pied sur Ste-Catherine quand il fait soudainement froid ou il pleut... mais dans ce temps-là (au centre-ville) les gens vont underground, alors ça devient compliqué à évaluer...

 

 

Comme plusieurs, j'évite (et trouve relativement inutile) de conduire/stationner sur Ste-Catherine;

mais vu le nombre de gens qui le font quand même, et vu que c'est une artère importante, fermer la rue toute l'année est plus risqué que ça en a l'air.

 

 

 

 

(...hum, dans le fond, vu qu'ils ont annulé le boulevard Maisonneuve, finalement ça a du sens de bloquer Ste-Catherine aussi... )

[Malek]

Yes, last month. It was great.

Wow neat, where are the pics?

 

You're saying Times Square is boring as hell? Well then i guess we just disagree on that. I find Times Square is rather cool and exciting. Plus now with the new seating and tables they have, it's like a giant outdoor terrasse.

 

You absolutely can't be serious. I was at Times Square many times before and it's a shadow of its former buzz. Yes there is chairs on the street and people seating on them and taking a break, but so what? Have you travelled to New York to see people sit down on lawn chairs?? And what outdoor terrasse?? That dynamic ain't hapenning, most people are just sitting ON LAWN chairs, this mean you are leaned, not in a position to chat with people around a beer or coffee...

 

I go to New York to engulf in their big city action, not to see some lame lawn chairs in the middle of the street, wow how original.

 

BTW, the giant stairs seating where already there before they closed parts of the street.

 

Sainte-Catherine is at the center of our Montreal universe, so why not?

 

One more reason not to screw it up.

 

So what? What does that have to do with anything? I have to wonder, did you read my arguments at all? You're saying completely unrelated things and trying to drive them home like they're some kind of argument. I never said i didn't park on Sainte-Catherine because i couldn't, i never parked on Sainte-Catherine because i never needed to. And even if parking would be available, it wouldn't be necessary - in the slightest.

 

Of course I read it and it's still false on all accounts. There's a thousand or two (no idea on the exact number) of street parking and frankly they are full... this mean they are used and useful, this is the easiest way of judging how important they are. All your new urban propaganda stuff they teach you in school doesn't come close to simple common sense, common sens that comes by observation. You don't use the parking on ste-cath, good for you, but please for the love of god, don't tell us they are not useful to everyone.

 

 

You're missing the point completely. This isn't a contest about who has spent more time on Sainte-Catherine street. The point was, in all the time i've spent there, i've never had to actually park there. There's simply no need!

 

No need for you, like I said previously, c'est pas parceque tu ne l'utilise pas qu'il est inutile.

 

 

Any street becomes dead or at least reduced in activity when it rains. Even Saint-Laurent. As for construction... Saint-Laurent business dropped during construction not because cars couldn't circulate - it's because there was a mountain of obstacles and equipment, noise and general unpleasantness in the way. The fact the road itself was inaccessible is only secondary. It's like saying your house is totally engulfed in flames but worrying that you left the thermostat on and it'll get too hot in the house as a result.

 

false, if the hootchie can't give her car to the valet in front of all those posh restaurants on st-laurent she'll just spend her money elsewhere... It's all about the road. Rains or not, clubs and restos are full, i can attest to that, as long as the street is open. But close it down, with bad weather and people will go elsewhere because they don't want to walk all dressed up in sloche and rain.

 

Anyway, i don't know what to say. You haven't actually responded to any of my arguments. You've sidestepped them all and provided no actual retorts to the core issues i've raised.

 

Your arguments don't even have a chance against the obvious common sense, why would I answer them and debate something I don't even take seriously.

[Malek]

It's intensely counter-intuitive, but closing roads in certain situations often leads to less traffic. In the case of Ste-Cath, i don't think it would reduce traffic, but i don't think it would lead to a significant increase either.

 

Again, i have to ask you, and return to my arguments in my last two posts: Why do you think shops would be killed off in the winter if the street was pedestrianized? The same truths for summer hold in the winter.

 

Actually, aside from the first picture, all the others are of a comparable or smaller population than us. In fact.. one of the pictures IS us. Before last one is Prince Arthur.

 

Less traffic, means people have went somewhere else, that means clients have fled and went spending their money somewhere else... obviously. I invite you to come observe the traffic at the exit that leads to carrefour laval on the 15 north on weekends... those people are fleeing Montreal to shop hassle free in Laval.

[Malek]

Oh and by the way, I also took a few Urban planning as well as transportation geography classes at Concordia. I'm not convinced that all they taught us was acurate and undebatable!

 

Its the same for every matter you study in school, you come out in the real world and see that you can't apply the rules in your book...

 

being dogmatic is the symptom of students and freshly graduated... after a couple of earth they align themselves.

[Malek]

Should Downtown Crossing be reopened to traffic?

 

Would car traffic bring back the crowds?

 

Boston Globe, by Michael Levenson, Globe Staff | March 1, 2009

 

Downtown Crossing's problems have been well-documented: Crime has spawned fear, heightened by a stabbing and shooting in the midst of a bustling afternoon. Shops that once thrived next to Jordan Marsh and Filene's have shuttered, leaving empty storefronts cheek-by-jowl with pushcarts, discount jewelry stalls, and gaping construction sites. Sidewalks that teem with rowdy teenagers and office workers by day lie empty and forbidding at night.

 

For years, city planners have been promising to restore the area to its former grandeur and make it a major urban destination. But as they have attempted solution after solution without success, they have never tried one idea: reopening the streets to traffic.

 

Indeed, Downtown Crossing remains one of the last vestiges of a largely discredited idea, the Ameri can pedestrian mall, which municipal planners once believed would help cities compete with proliferating suburban malls. In the 1970s, at least 220 cities closed downtown thoroughfares, paved them with bricks or cobbles and waited for them to take hold as urban destinations. Since then, all but about two dozen have reopened the malls to traffic, as planners, developers, and municipal officials came to believe that the lack of cars had an effect opposite of what they had intended, driving away shoppers, stifling businesses, and making streets at night seem barren and forlorn.

 

"Pedestrian malls never delivered the type of foot traffic and vitality they had expected," said Doug Loescher, director of The Main Street Center at The National Trust for Historic Preservation.

 

"The sense of movement that a combination of transit modes provides - whether on foot or in car - really does make a difference," he said. "People feel safer, because there's some kind of movement through the district, other than a lone pedestrian at night. It just creates a sense of energy that makes people feel more comfortable and makes the district more appealing."

 

Boston planners are against opening up Downtown Crossing, but as the district suffers the exodus of anchor businesses and a deepening malaise has settled in, some shop owners long for the energy, ease, and excitement they remember before Downtown Crossing closed to most traffic in 1978.

 

"There was a constant flow of cars, stopping and going; it was very active, very busy, like a typical city street," said Steve Centamore, co-owner since 1965 of Bromfield Camera Co., on Bromfield Street, part of which is open only to commercial traffic. "There were people coming and going. It didn't seem to impede any pedestrians. It was a lot busier. People could just pull up and get what they needed. Now, it takes an act of Congress to even get through here."

 

Pellegrino Bondanza, 72, who has sold vegetables in Downtown Crossing since he was a boy, said the pedestrian mall "didn't work out well." He hopes the city will reopen it to traffic.

 

"Maybe it would bring some of the action back in town," he said. "I remember as a kid, I tried to squeeze in with a pushcart and, if I could locate at a corner, I could sell what I had in an hour and make a good living there. You had to be a little careful crossing the streets and everything, but don't forget the cars went slow when they were going up them streets there. There was no fast driving."

 

Boston officials say they considered reopening Downtown Crossing to traffic and, in 2006, hired a team of consultants from London, Toronto, Berkeley, Calif., and Boston to study the idea. The consultants concluded that the mall should stay because the estimated 230,000 people who walk through Downtown Crossing every day should be enough to keep the place lively and economically vital.

 

"What we heard from them pretty loudly was, 'Not just yet. Make it work. Give it your best effort,' " said Andrew Grace, senior planner and urban designer at the Boston Redevelopment Authority. "Lots of cities throughout the world make these districts work. The historic centers in most European cities function, and they thrive." --Europe...

 

Kristen Keefe, retail sector manager of the BRA, warned that bringing back traffic could squeeze out pedestrians who, she said, already contend with crowded sidewalks. "We just think these two things are in conflict," she said.

 

Boston built its pedestrian mall after a study showed that six times more pedestrians than cars traveled down Washington Street - in front of what was then Filene's and Jordan Marsh - "so the impetus was to reassert the balance for pedestrians a little bit and improve the safety and amenities for pedestrians," said Jane Howard, who helped design the mall for the BRA and is now a planner in a private firm.

 

It was a time when malls were being built across the country. Some are still considered successful - in Burlington, Vt., and Charlottesville, Va., for example. And New York City is experimenting with blocking traffic on Broadway through Times and Herald squares to create pedestrian-only zones. But those are the exceptions.

 

Chicago, which turned downtown State Street into a pedestrian mall in 1979, reopened it to traffic in 1996, convinced that the mall had worsened the area's economic slump and left the street deserted and dangerous. Eugene, Ore., scrapped its mall in 1997, frustrated that "people went around downtown instead of through it," said Mayor Kitty Piercy. Tampa got rid of its mall in 2001 because it "didn't bring back any retail," as the city had hoped, said Christine M. Burdick president of Tampa Downtown Partnership.

 

Buffalo, which has trolley service on its mall on Main Street, is currently reintroducing cars after finding that shoppers avoided stores that were cut off from traffic.

 

"It takes a leap of faith to go somewhere nearby, pay to park, and then walk to someplace you haven't been yet," said Deborah Chernoff, Buffalo's planning director. "All the cities are dealing with the reality of how people actually behave."

 

Downtown Crossing is not even a full pedestrian mall. Because Washington Street, its main thoroughfare, is open to commercial traffic, pedestrians mostly stick to the sidewalks, avoiding the cabs and police cruisers that often ply the route.

 

After dark on a recent weeknight, just after 8:30 p.m., Downtown Crossing resembled a film noir scene, its deserted rain-slick streets glistening with the reflections of neon signs from a shuttered liquor store and a discount jewelry shop. The few pedestrians who hurried by were mostly teenagers and office workers descending into the subway or headed to the bustle on Tremont Street. They walked purposefully, scurrying past darkened store after darkened store with metal gates pulled shut. The only cars were a police cruiser that rumbled past, an idling garbage truck, and the occassional taxi.

 

Yet some say the mall should stay.

 

The developer Ronald M. Druker, who owns buildings on Washington Street, said he has "vivid memories of the conflict between cars and pedestrians," before the mall was built. "If you insinuated cars and trucks on a normal basis into that area, it would not enliven it," he said. "It would create the same problems that it created 30 years ago when we got rid of them."

 

But others, particularly the shop owners struggling to survive the recession say they are eager to try just about anything that would bring back business.

 

"Downtown Crossing definitely needs something - that's for sure," said Harry Gigian owner since 1970 of Harry Gigian Co. jewelers on Washington Street, which has seen a sharp dropoff in sales. "Nobody comes downtown anymore."

[Malek]

Chicago's pedestrian mall solution: traffic

Fortunes soared with format shift

 

Walkers bustled along downtown Chicago's State Street last week. The area declines while it was a pedestrian mall. (Peter Wynn for the Boston Globe)

By Michael Levenson

Globe Staff / March 9, 2009

 

 

CHICAGO - State Street's problems 20 years ago will sound familiar to anyone who knows Downtown Crossing in Boston.

 

The historic downtown shopping destination, once anchored by classic department stores like Marshall Field and Goldblatt's, was dirty, dangerous, and down on its knees. The city had blocked off traffic on the street, turning it into a pedestrian mall in hopes of competing with suburban malls.

 

But instead of enlivening the street, the mall isolated it from the rest of downtown. Businesses closed, shoppers fled, pigeons and trash proliferated, and the street emptied into a wasteland at night. Like their counterparts in Boston, Chicago officials dispatched fruit vendors, hoping they would bring back shoppers. They didn't.

 

Under mounting pressure from business owners, the city made a fateful decision in 1996. Like hundreds of cities across the country, it decided to rip up its pedestrian mall and reconnect State Street to downtown.

 

These days, State Street is at the heart of a downtown renaissance. By day, diverse crowds of office workers, college students, and teenagers throng the sidewalks, passing hotels, coffee shops, bookstores, and clothing stores. By night, condo owners return to the upper floors of formerly decrepit department stores, students head to newly built classrooms and dorms, and visitors flock to rehabilitated theaters. Businesses power-wash the sidewalks and maintain planters. The local ABC affiliate even built a glass studio on State Street, turning the hubbub into a live backdrop, like Rockefeller Plaza on the "Today" show.

 

As Boston grapples with the decline of Downtown Crossing, the rebirth of Chicago's State Street is a case study of how a seemingly small change - opening up the area to traffic - can usher in a long period of growth and renewal. Chicago officials and business owners, like those in Boston, knew they ultimately needed more appealing stores, increased nighttime safety, and enhanced amenities for pedestrians. But unlike in Boston, they came to the decision that none of those changes would be possible if the city did not remove its pedestrian mall first.

 

"It was a very courageous decision because we had spent a lot of money to mall it, and we had to say, 'You know what? This is not working,' " said Christina Raguso, acting commissioner of the Department of Community Development. "Fortunately, the mayor could see past the mall, and see that there was still prosperity in State Street. And it's really a great story. It worked. It opened up so many economic opportunities and retail opportunities for the street, and made it a destination."

 

Like Downtown Crossing, which sees an estimated 230,000 people walk through every day, State Street always enjoyed heavy foot traffic. Even during its nadir in the 1980s, more than 20,000 people passed most corners of the nine-block mall every day, making it one of the most traveled areas in the city. But not until the street was reconnected to downtown did the district come back to life, city officials and planners say.

 

"It was just critical," said Philip Enquist, an urban designer at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which designed the removal of the mall. "I think State Street would not have succeeded had we not brought the cars back. The ripple effects have been phenomenal."

 

There are a few distinct differences between State Street and Downtown Crossing. The Chicago mall was larger than Boston's, nine blocks compared with four, and it was constructed on a wide thoroughfare that could handle four lanes of traffic and wide sidewalks to accommodate pedestrians, unlike Boston's narrower Washington Street.

 

Boston officials staunchly oppose the removal of the mall in Downtown Crossing, saying they hired consultants who concluded that it could still thrive. Some shop owners and developers agree, but as the district has suffered the closing of Filene's and Jordan Marsh in recent years, others argue that it is time for the mall to go.

 

"It just has created this blockage," said John B. Hynes III, the developer and grandson of Boston Mayor John B. Hynes, who is struggling to finance the conversion of the former Filene's building into a residential and retail tower. "I've talked to a dozen retailers, and they wish that people could drive through, just because it makes it easier to drop people off and pick them up."

 

American cities built more than 200 pedestrian malls in the 1960s and 1970s, when they were losing shoppers to proliferating suburban malls and hoping to draw them back with placid, car-free walkways in their downtowns. Chicago built its mall in 1979; Boston built its in 1978.

 

"In those days, the suburbs were hot, white flight was taking place, and people were scared of urban America," said Ty Tabing, executive director of the Chicago Loop Alliance, the downtown business association. "It was a different era then, when these things made sense."

 

In Chicago, city officials and shoppers soon came to regard the State Street mall as a failure, pocked with fast-food outlets, wig shops, and discount stores. The Reliance Building, a grand skyscraper from the 1890s, became a symbol of its decline, a vacant "flophouse for pigeons," in the words of one city official.

 

"This group of businesses were extremely frustrated with the mall," Enquist said. "It was downbeat. The businesses were really failing. It was very inactive at night. Hotels wouldn't even have State Street on the map because they didn't want people walking there at night. It only had police cars and buses so it had this terrible feel to it."

 

In early 1996, the city scrapped the mall. These days, only about two dozen downtown malls remain nationwide, as officials and planners came to a reluctant conclusion: that the lack of traffic hurt downtowns by walling them off from the rest of the city.

 

"The lesson is that cities are about activity and energy," said Elizabeth Hollander, who was Chicago's planning commissioner in the 1980s and is now a senior fellow at Tufts University. "What they want to do is make themselves different from suburban malls - that's their niche."

In the last decade, State Street has seen an influx of business. The Reliance Building was rehabilitated into a boutique hotel, the Burnham. A mix of stores - Old Navy, Urban Outfitters, Land's End, Macy's - have opened, and the refurbished Chicago Theatre, Gene Siskel Film Center, and Joffrey Ballet draw nighttime visitors. The area still has its problems - several vacant buildings, rowdy loiterers.

 

But the outlook is much brighter than it was in the 1980s.

 

"It went into a downward spiral," said Ronald M. Arnold, vice president of business affairs at Robert Morris College, which is located on State Street. "When the street was reopened, life came back to it. It's just that activity and bustle that creates that excitement, that feeling of safety and security that makes things happen."

Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com.

[Malek]

On a deux cents exemples de comment ce n'est pas une bonne idée chez nos voisins du sud avec qui on partage beaucoup de similitudes, et ça dans des très grosses villes... et pourtant certains s'entêtent