If I only had a dollar for every city planner or designer that writes about Savannah… well, you know how that ends.
Last month, urban planner Susan Henderson spent a few days in Savannah, and shares her thoughts on the Place Makers blog. Even though we know the city well as residents, it’s always interesting to check in on the perspectives of others. Here are a couple of key quotes from Susan’s well-written and illustrated piece:
“The diversity of civic, residential, and commercial uses delivers almost continuous activity. The squares are busy over the weekend with people attending service, children playing while parents sit in the shade and chat, people dining and lingering at sidewalk cafés, and tourists discovering colonial history and searching for that classic scene evocative of Forrest Gump or Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. During the week, the tourist presence remains, but the squares include people taking their lunch break on a bench or students walking between classes.”
“I did find it interesting that Savannah made some mistakes over time, especially during the era of converting squares to parking decks and civic centers, the traffic engineering nightmare of one-way streets, and finally, an unfortunate series of public frontages. Luckily, there aren’t many of these, but because of the beauty of the architectural fabric, the mistakes are quite notable.”
Enjoy the entire piece here: http://www.placemakers.com/2017/04/04/lessons-from-savannah/