Word: weather
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...like Calgary, where the average winter temperature is 26.2 degrees F, the original, climate-mitigating rationale for skywalks was not unreasonable. What's wrong with being able to wander unbundled from office to store to parking garage in the middle of north-country January? "To be out of the weather," says Pat Huntington, general manager of the Saks Fifth Avenue store that is plugged into Cincinnati's 23-odd skywalk system, "is a tremendous feeling of security...
...very early on in the skywalk boom, weather was superseded by boosterism economics: elevated bridges came to be seen as prods for real estate development, quick fixes for tapped-out downtowns. Here and there they seemed to do the trick. The growth of the publicly owned Des Moines Skywalk System, which began in 1982, has indeed coincided with an economic revival of the city's downtown. Skywalks are not cheap: construction can run as much as $3,000 per linear foot. But developers can charge 5% to 10% rent premiums to tenants in towers plugged into the systems...
Despite the generally balmy weather in Atlanta, Architect-Developer John Portman loves nothing more than connecting his bombastic towers and atriums with skywalks: one running through Peachtree Center is 640 ft. long. "People moved to the suburbs because they want low anxiety," Portman says. "We must bring them back to the center city. The pedestrian bridge is a part of that." Now, however, Atlanta zoning officials are considering a recommendation by the 300-member Central Area Study group to prohibit further skywalk construction downtown. As the novelty value of skywalks palls and as more cities realize that downtown vitality...
...illusion of motion has become so powerful that it is indistinguishable from the real thing. Moreover, with a few minor changes, the same technology has been used to simulate everything from spaceships to submarines, from armored tanks to oil tankers, re-creating every possible combination of bad luck, foul weather and faulty equipment. Says William James, American Airlines' director of flight training: "There's nothing we can't simulate...
Skywalks, those enclosed bridges linking downtown buildings, provide warmth in cold weather; they also cast a chill on urban life...