Whose Comfort Matters in Public Spaces?

A Mall for “Everyone”

Earlier this year, the City of Minneapolis broke ground on a $50 million overhaul of Nicollet Mall, the 12-block centerpiece of its downtown. Like many main street projects, the Nicollet Mall Project is rooted in high-minded principles of public space: that attractive, multifunctional, green, diverse, and life-filled downtowns beget economic activity and social well-being. The City hired the designers of Manhattan’s High Line to lead the redesign. The website for the project touts that it is “making a mall for everyone.”

There is some irony here. While Nicollet Mall is aesthetically outdated (one writer recently described it as “rather dull”), has poor frontage, and loses pedestrians to second-story skyways overhead, it already attracts tens of thousands of residents, workers, shoppers, tourists, and barflies every day. If you have attended a national conference in Minneapolis, you have probably been there too.

Some say the Mall’s problem is one of too many people, or at least too many of a certain type.