19 May 2015

Here's A Vision: Light Rail on Main Street inThe New Urban Downtown Mesa


It's taken from a article by a Distinguished Professor of Architecture, Michael Sorkin City College of New York. Hit this link:  City Limits: How Localizing Is the Key to Our Urban Future

QUESTION: How does a vision like this get localized?
Although many people have questioned building light rail tracks running "right through the heart of downtown Mesa", when it could have been planned on the path of earlier railways from Mesa to Tempe and Phoenix on what is now University Drive, it will now become a warp in weaving the urban fabric important to both the original "One-Square Mile" extending for blocks on/off and north/south of Main Street while creating a long-range transportation corridor.

Mesa History Museum image
Keep in mind that Main Street was once a parking lot as you can see from the visual to the left. Traffic patterns have since moved to highways, freeways, shopping malls, sub-urban sprawls, corporate and industrial parks, technology corridors, and Aerotropolis.

Open Downtown space is now available to plan a clear vision for how the new urban downtown will evolve that is not car-dependent

What you do not see in the visual above are no cars at all - you see light rail and a lot of green with people and activities on the streets.
You see low-rise higher density buildings and vertical gardens, not asphalt-covered heat islands.

It may be a stretch of the imagination to figure out how to localize here in the New Urban Downtown Mesa the features in the urban future envisioned by Michael Sorkin, so let's imagine and seriously get together at a "grassroots" level to regenerate not only the vision of our new urban environment, but make it the world around us. If New York City can transform an old rusty abandoned elevated railway into the High Line surely we can do that on the ground here on Main Street.

Your blogger used to walk by this every day in Central Park: it stuck in my mind
You might want to contact your local organization called ULTIMATE IMAGINATIONS and find out what the Downtown Mesa Association is incorporating into their vision ....
Ultimate Imaginations Inc

You may say I'm a Dreamer, but let's trust I'm not the only one!

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