Downtown Kalamazoo Analysis

1. Downtown Kalamazoo's business area is a relatively nice business district. The building design is clean and modern, and the overall atmosphere is pleasant. The streets are clean and the traffic is low, and there is a nice mix of retail stores- especially places to eat and get coffee or drinks. The area is well designed and there are nice benches and plants on the streets.
2. 1) Get rid of vacant storefronts
2) Up the security and police presence
3) Make everything more car accessible

3. "The shade trees and planter boxes? Lovely, he says, but they block shoppers' view of shop windows and signs. Those handsome groupings of benches and tables? They seem inviting until Gibbs points out that they often attract teenagers and other loiterers, who scare off shoppers. The elegant Victorian streetlamps, the expensive trash cans, and the distinctive granite paving stones--"so beautiful that people will stare at them as they walk by the storefronts," Gibbs says--are little more than money down the drain. Their costs must be amortized over many years, but long before they have been paid off (and before the town can afford to replace them) they will be old-fashioned, marking the entire street as out of date and out of step."
I disagree with this evaluation of downtown aesthetics. I find all these things attractive, and if done well, not dating or uninviting at all. I like the brick streets on Kalamazoo's pedestrian mall, and I also like the benches, planters, and tables. I think they add to the appeal and make it a nice place to go.

P.S. Sorry this is so late, I lost my blogger password when my firefox shut down- just retrieved it today!