Weeks after even the Post stopped wasting words whining about the temporary furniture and plastic bollards in car-free Times Square, the Times mounted their own attack. Susan Dominus critiques the pedestrian space, a work in progress, saying it has “a rough, slipshod feel†and “looks a little unworthy of New York.†It’s the same analysis that could be made of Atlantic Yards, the World Trade Center, as well as every partially-finished construction project in the city. And she has a solution:
The city may be reeling from recession, but the huge orange plastic containers and tatty hardware-store chairs give the sense that it’s already letting itself go, like some Lehman Brothers wife who has not just forsaken her golden highlights, but given up on grooming altogether. Surely someone at Ikea could have helped the city ease this transition — maybe some witty, oversize umbrellas (sure, weighed down), or at least chairs that do not look like they are lonely for the company of pink flamingos.
Note: replacing the temporary lawn chairs with temporary Swedish lawn chairs until construction finishes in mid-August makes no sense.
I agree with the critique. Much of the new ped-des areas are woefully poorly designed. I like the idea of terraces, but I think the stadium/bleachers design is ridiculous. The way those are designed is also rather poor. There are no easily identifiable pathways, so when it starts getting sort of crowded, it becomes awkward to snake ones way to the top. The lawn chains are completely ridiculous. Literally ANYTHING would have been smarter and classier than that. Seriously, they could have just put a bunch of large, jagged rocks and it would have been cooler than a sparse array of plastic lawnchairs. It seems every other bit of "reclaimed" roadway in NYC is more attractive than the Times Sq.'s area, and I think that not acknowledging that fact it a blatant toe-the-line support of the public space without regard for the look of the space, which I believe is equally important as the use thereof. I do think that having some pedestrian space is better than none, but there should have been a nicer plan for what to do with the space prior to closing off the roads and redirecting traffic.