Connecting and Completing Downcity Providence

[Cotuit]

While I personally love just about all the suggestions in the report (with the notable exception of the arcaded Westminster Bridge, which looks to me like it would be as bad, scary, and unused as the arcades in the current Cathedral Square) my wife brought me back down to earth. She asked, "Why would a private landowner (like the auto body shops on Washington and West Fountain Streets) voluntarily give up their land or build a new facade on their building when all they are really interested in is providing parking or selling auto parts?"

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think the West Side proposals are the most shaky, and the most difficult to implement, specifically because there are so many small properties owned by so many different people. The West Side isn't something that I think we'll see come off in one large push, and Duany admitted this. Rather what the West Side will be is many individual small developers working on small lot sized projects one at a time. The city's job is to try to steer that development in an urbanly friendly direction, i.e. no drive through donut shops like what is currently proposed at Broadway and the Service Road.