Click the linky if you feel like reading it. It takes on the local notion of "Main Street Town Centers" and their execution. The developers heart was in the right place. You can tell by all of the expense they went to adding urban design element after urban design element. But it was like trying to bake a cake with all of the ingredients and no proper instructions or measurements. The result is a vat of goo.
It is also a lesson that good urban space don't require the knicknacks. Via del Corso, the prime commercial "main street" in Rome, the center trivium linking Piazza del Popolo to the "wedding cake" has none of these things. What it has is convergence and proper interface between conduit and site.
Posts
