I had occasion to do some photography on State Street the other day that took approximately one hour in the early morning. While waiting for the sun to rise to the optimum position for best shots, I was struck again at what an aloof and unfriendly place the “great street” has become.
It must give perverse pleasure to the planners/designers of the reworked State Street Mall to see citizens of this truly beautiful city standing around waiting for everything–buses, friends or the right sunlight, as I was, with no option to sit anywhere. They probably never gave the pedestrian a thought when eliminating all seating spaces along the entire length of State Street. I saw one man scrunched into a corner of the Marshall Field’s building, but that was about it.
Must people be on their feet every moment in the course of shopping? Or, is it, as my visiting son from New York suggested, a design to keep the bums away? Sorry, but when we had seating areas, I noticed more weary shoppers, grateful for a place to momentarily relax, than the above-mentioned bums.
Adding insult to injury are the ubiquitous flowerpots with their spiky borders that dare anyone to try to sit on them! And how about the shelters that used to protect CTA riders from rain and snow. Nowadays, if you can’t find room to paste yourself up against Field’s or Carsons, you are out of luck (or inside their store possibly shopping–they hope).
We needed the human touch and instead got a street designed for robots.
