For an image of Minneapolis skywalk click here
For text on skywalks in Des Moines Click here
For planning documents on skywalks in Texas Click here
For planning regulations around skywalks in Lincoln Click here
Critiques of skywalks:
http://www.bgnews.com/media/paper883/news/2006/01/11/State/Elevated.Skywalks.Start.Coming.Down-1322840.shtml?norewrite&sourcedomain=www.bgnews.com
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060118/BUSINESS/601180403/1003/ARCHIVES
For information on the case of Newark Click here
Skywalk advocacy:
http://www.architecturemag.com/architecture/reports_analysis/design_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000505649
Skywalk debates:
http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=20472&pid=315686&st=0&#entry315686Should Charlotte Remove the Rest of its Skywalks? - e-discussion
http://kurtandersen.com/journalism/time/time_des080188skywalks.htmlan american overview
Dismantling skywalks:
For information on Cincinnati Click here
For information on the dismantling of skywalk links in Baltimore Click here
For planning documentation on an altered planning logic on skywalks in Rosslyn Click here
Climate and sociability: pedestrian mobility in winter (the american experience, the american goal):
http://www.upea.com/winter/Pedestrians.htm
The walkable city:
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=JUPDDM000131000004000246000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes
References to check:
Southworth, Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities, 1996
Robertson, Kent A., 1994, 'Pedestrian Malls and Skywalks: Traffic Separation Strategies in American Downtowns' Avebury, Aldershot, Hampshire.
In this first pair of readings, two different conceptions of skywalks emerge. In the first reading, the public skywalk zones of the city become places for panhandlers and unruly teens offering one relationship to personal security. In the other reading, attention is drawn to the development of private skywalks between private office spaces which insulate and sanitise this private traffic from the interactions of public space.
Technology and social control. Garry T. Marx Skywalks as private or "sanitary" zones
We can seen very readily that the varying private/public configurations of skywalks can have different relationships to personal security.
The development of skywalks as a mechanism for enabling the freer flow of automobile traffic can have consequences street level commercial and social environments. Recent discussions around the Yale - New Haven Cancer Center provide a useful insight into the tensions and dilemmas around new developments.
Yale - New Haven Cancer Center
SWOT analysis - skywalks, Pittsburgh
Topic/s for discussion: Why are skywalks thought to negatively impact upon street level retail and social activities? Can skywalks be designed so that they better contribute towards pedestrian circulation at street level and contribute more fully to street level retail activities?
This reading draws attention to the use of skywalks as a mechanism for upgrading the image of ground transportation centers. Skywalks can be used to provide image as well as pedestrian circulation benefits. The direct connection of the ground transportation center at Cedar Rapids to a public library by skwyalk offers an interesting model.
Penn Station Newark and the Gateway Project
Topic for discussion: what are the benefits and what are the disbenefits of creating images of 'quality' and 'visible investment' around ground transportation centers by borrowing from the 'infrastructural vocabulary' of airports.
Skywalk design in North America has frequently been critiqued for the barriers it has created between the different levels of pedestrian circulation. Designing skywalks so that they enable easy access to street level pedestrian circulation and ensuring that sky walks are accessible from the street level and with twenty four hour access is worthy of our consideration. Similarly signs can be used to reduce the experience of "barriers' to the moving between levels. Thinking in terms of a holistic pedestrian circulation system which incorporated both skywalks and street level pedestrian facilities is the more effective process. Designing sky walks and street level facilities so that pedestrians in one type of facility are visible to the other can also assist in pedestrian traffic making use of both modes.
Topic for discussion: what types of interchange facilities can be provided between skywalks and street level pedestrian areas? How can such facilities be used to improve the image and activity levels of both skywalks and pedestrian areas?
Stairs as an access path to skywalks can constitute barriers: elevators and escalators of transparent design can be used to better integrate street level and skywalk pedestrian facilities into an effective pedestrian circuit. The city of Houghton provides an example of where previous skywalk designs proved ineffective because of the barrier that stairs constituted.
MIT dissertation on planning for winter cities
Bibliography for winter cities
Topic for discussion: The walkability of winter cities is an active planning discourse. The interaction of climate and the conflict between pedestrian and automotive traffic provides a challenge to the planning of effective pedestrian facilities. Locations with strong seasonality of climates may have to plan for different arrangements in different seasons: the ideal pedestrian route in summer may be very different to the ideal pedestrian route in winter. Traffic barriers which are an inconvenience in summer may constitute severe physical discomfort in winter: in this context, seasonality considerations have to be built into the design of the total pedestrian circulation system. In the planning documents reviewed so far there has been little or no such discussion. Designing facilities so that winter sky walk use can be paralleled by summer street level use with easy exchange between the facilities makes sense. One possibility might be providing additional access to skywalks from department stores at the second or third level whilst maintaining street level access to department stores. Within such a model, the internal circulation arrangements of department stores become an extension of skywalks. Any such arrangements need to be parallelled by twenty four hour access arrangements.
The mix of public/private financing of skywalks contains the potential for problems when dismantling the infrastructure. Privately financed skywalks exist within the air space of cities and this gives cities the rights over the retaining or dismantling skywalks as an urban form.
Lincoln, Nebraska, has explicit planning regulation covering the dismantling of sky walks where these are privately owned:
This week's readings draw attention to the collapse of the two skywalks in Kansas City. Alterations to the original design and construction short cuts appear to have played a key role in this collapse. The readings open up the discussion of ethical as well as construction failures in respect of this urban tragedy.
Kansas City: skywalk collapse, an engineering powerpoint
Topic for discussion: How transparent are construction practices? Does new technology provide for new levels of transparency in construction processes.?
Our third reading enables us to explore the notion of performance art in street space and adjacent locations.
Topic for discussion: Discuss the Zurich concept of walkable neighbourhoodsand compare it with the concept of the Asian street provided in the second reading. What are the consequences of separating out activities so as to provide quiet zones or neighbourhoods? How are different pedestrian cultures likely to impact on the need or desire for skywalks? How can skywalks, sidewalks and street performances be brought into a creative relationship which benefits the city?
This week we explore the expanding use of skywalks in Asia. At the very same time as there has been a discussion of dismantling skywalks in the USA, there has been an increasing practice of skywalk adoption in Asia. As the readings below demonstrate, the language surrounding these developments contains many references to "modernistic" and "futuristic" aesthetic and business messages.
The four-storey building that also has two floors below the ground is a perfect fusion of futuristic and minimalist design. The main design element used in exteriors and interiors is glass, which silhouettes the building, making good use of sunlight. Besides glass, imported Italian marble, steel and wood give the building an international look The use of hidden lighting makes the environment inside the building very pleasant."
Bangalore: a system of skywalks?
"A skywalk is not a regular concrete pedestrian over bridge, but an elegant walkway offering ample space for pedestrians and advertisers," says senior civil engineering professor at IISc B. R. Srinivas Murthy.
Hong Kong has developed a policy of promoting elevated walkways within the city - the readings listed below give us both an overview of this system and an insight into the planning process of this system:
Elevated walkways - planning for pedestrians, Hong Kong
Elevated walkways -planning for pedestrians, Hong Kong (2)
Elevated walkways and the design of pedestrian systems: Hong Kong
A different perspective on the translation of European modernistic forms to Asias, and Hong Kong in particular can be found at:
where it is argued that:
"Hong Kong is a modernistic city without the emptiness. The Corbusian tower blocks in the New Towns stand side by side, dozens of them in a bunch, without any attempt being made to arrange them to produce some kind of spatial effect. We find point blocks lined up along a street - a hybrid model, a combination of Colin Rowe's city of objects, and the city of streets. The strange aha-experience of seeing familiar European avant-garde models distorted in their application in Hong Kong is also evoked by the pedestrian deck in Central Hong Kong, countless kilometers of elevated walkways, atriums and escalators. Some may recognize a resemblance to the plan the Smithsons made for Berlin, but the deck is here meant purely as a doubling of the traffic flows, not as a separation of them, and it does not have the least metaphysical significance."
Moving to a different Asian country, Japan, we can see that the modernistic image of skywalks has certainly played its part in developments, however, there are challenges to the concept of people taking to the higher levels of elevated walkways whilst traffic remains on the surface level:
Railway stations with skywalks - Japan
The construction of pedestrian overpass systems or skywalks receives explicit discussion in the Taipei planning process. Although, no explicit discussion of skywalks as modernistic or futuristic icons has been found, there is discussion of these qualities in terms of related developments:
"The Xin-Yi Planning District incorporates department store industry, entertainment industry, headquarters of private corporations, and upscale residential developments. The skyscraper Taipei 101 has become the landmark of this Taipei City sub-center."
Topic for discussion: Within Asia, are skywalks conceived primarily as a mechanism for separating out pedestrians and motorised traffic? or are they conceived of primarily as a mechanism for increasing pedestrian capacity within city centres? or are they serving the purpose of signalling integration into the modern business climate? What balance do you see between these functions and goals in the skywalk systems that you have reviewed?
This week we turn to thinking about how skywalk living and viable street life and vibrant downtowns can be integrated. During our reading on this journey into the planning experience and lived city experience of skywalks we have seen that many adjustments can be made to better integrate skywalk developments with vibrant street level retail and social activities. We have drawn attention to the importance of the quality and transparency of interchanges between these facilities. Planning residential developments at the skywalk level which can access street level retail and social activities requires sensitivity to the range of possible pedestrian circulation patterns and systems. Whilst much of the literature focuses on negative relationships between skywalks and street level retail and social activities, this is an unduly narrow focus. Alternative relationships remain to be explored. Skywalks can operate as supplements, complements and feed-ins to attractive downtown life and facilities. Where unnecessary barriers to circulation between skywalk movement and street level movement have been designed in by accident or lack of forethought, the experience of skywalks is likely to be negative. In evaluating any particular skywalk arrangement, attention has to be paid to the identification and understanding of any such barriers. Whether a skywalk system works in the overall well-functioning of an urban system is a consequence of the particularities of design, there is no one simple outcome or pattern. This week's first reading focuses on the negative aspects and demonstrates the extent to which an informed full evaluation of the success/ failure of skywalks has still to take place.
This week's second reading
This week's third reading
Topic for discusion: Discuss the extent to which downtown, sky walk based residential schemes can be combined with vibrant street level retail activities.
This week we focus on the toolkits which have recently been developed to evaluate the pedestrian environment. There is an increasing body of scholarship on pedestrian environments and systems. Planning cohesive pedestrian environments has begun to appear as an important element of practice. This week's readings provide access to three tool kits which indicate the development of this new field of interest and practice.
Making strides: Pedestrian Best Practices
http://www.psrc.org/datapubs/pubs/pedfacilitiesguidebook.pdf
Topic for discussion: Identify the critical components necessary for inclusion in a toolkit on the relationship between pedestrian behaviour and effective skywalk operation.