Skyways

I just got home from a short trip to North Carolina, it was great, on the plane ride home, I sat next to someone from Texas, it was a just a connecting flight, but enough time to have a nice conversation about the places we both live, and even a little bit about church.

What’s funny though, to me as a Minnesotan is that when I talk about our Twin Cities, I usually end up mentioning the skyways, and forget that not many cities actually have this feature.

Maybe you don’t know what I’m talking about either, allow me to explain.

I tell people from around the country that Minnesota can get cold. Really cold, but we like walking around for lunch in the middle of the day and finding the warmest ways to travel even if it’s only a couple of blocks.

In both Minneapolis and Saint Paul, we enjoy the use of skyways: enclosed bridges on second floor of buildings downtown. These are great, especially in the winter. If you park in a garage at home you can actually completely avoid being outside in the winter and still commute to work, you drive to your parking ramp, head to the skyway entrance, walk to your office building, and ride the elevator up, and then grab lunch in the building with the delicious sandwich shop down the road, while staying in temperature controlled walkways.

Some people don’t like them though, why you ask? – street appeal since business people are working in the skyways during the winter, many of the lunch places in downtown rest on second floors buried into the middle of the buildings for easy elevator access. This means that the stores and restaurants their entrances on ground floor streets, and most notable, outdoor entrances, have been susceptible to struggling over the years. Some people think that because many stores have had to close their doors over the years, that it’s a sign we shouldn’t rely on our skyways.

I think there’s a balance to be found in this, and there’s at least some value on both sides of the argument. But for me its just fun to explain.

Architect and infrastructure affect cities, their cultures, commutes, and their economies…and their lunch hours.