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Originally Posted by urbanforest
Happy to have sparked some discussion and appreciate the insights—I hadn't even noticed the giant pit at WEP at first look. Here's a bonus shot facing toward the Market.
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I have lived in Ottawa my entire life, and the removal of surface parking lots downtown has been a big plus. They were truly ugly, like missing teeth in the urban design.
I expect those surface lots, which were everywhere back in the 60s, were the result of the removal of old housing and commercial buildings in the post war years. Some of those old buildings were major losses to the city, but I recall a lot of them were really crappy structures.
Unfortunately, a lot of the buildings from the 60s to the 80s did not have a street presence that was a major loss. it was a time of indoor malls that have often backfired. Poor connectivity to sidewalks and pedestrians did not work out so well. Many of those indoor malls are dead or at least underutilized. Like 240 Sparks Street, poor sidewalk connectivity to that block of Sparks Street has produced a dead zone.
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