Did you draw that or is it a collage?

Capriccio

Edit: spelling

Nick’s for breakfast

Great! Mall needs this.

Which one? Where?

They have been saying fuck off to drivers by steadily eliminating free on-street parking for years now. It’s been a clearly visible erosion.

Perhaps this is due to the political influence of powerful parking lot owners.

Every successful downtown in history has relied upon people coming in from other places to spend money there.

Yes- more housing downtown will help; but that’s not a complete solution. Downtown Providence was vibrant in the past because it drew workers each weekday that didn’t live there:

Office workers. They worked in banks, investment companies, insurance agencies, accounting firms, any number of endeavors, but they came to work in an office in Providence, even though they didn’t live in the city.

This is what a metropolitan capital looks like. Lively, alive. Crowded. Bankers, brokers, actors, paralegals, office managers, bartenders, interns, administrators, students, retirees, all in the mix, getting lunch.

That was back in the day, 15 or 20 years ago, when Providence had a functioning financial district and a vibrant downtown.

Now it’s just students and retirees, if you’re lucky.

Pizza J

Thanks for weighing in. I know what you mean.

It’s an extremely unfashionable take: the regional approach- which sees Providence as a node -the central node- in a net of settlements that wrap around Narragansett Bay, a spread-out populace that has a place to come together, specifically Providence, specifically downtown.

Vs. the current medieval-revival orthodoxy that trims Providence’s metropolitan ambitions down to a more insular vibe, where downtown is for Providence residents who live within walking, biking, or scooting distance. (RiPTA, let’s be honest, is not used routinely by those with any other practical options.)

I’m not here for upvotes.

Reddit seems like it sometimes can appreciate actual conversation. I know I’ve benefited from reading different takes on issues on forums like this.

Same here. Between those concerts, and the Xgames, and the general vibe….the city felt so alive then.

Totally. We already have an amphitheater on the water that works great for concerts- Waterplace.

Except it’s definitely not doing everything right. Taxes and rents are both really high, and doing business with the city is a nightmare. The city government really doesn’t seem to care if businesses succeed or fail.

Let’s take the strategy of making downtown more pedestrian-friendly by, in part, intentionally making it more difficult to drive in, or into, or park, in the city.

Ie, “Let’s make it harder to drive, and nearly impossible to park for free, and people will switch to walking, bikes, and scooters!”

What keeps getting lost over and over in this conversation is the fact that the viability of Downtown Providence depends on the participation of many people who live in the greater Providence area, but not in the city itself. aka ‘Greater Providence’.

In the 80s and 90s and aughts, it was very common for people from the surrounding suburbs and exurbs to come into downtown Providence for a night of fun.

But due to a bunch of shitty trends, including political polarization, inadequate policing, and false news, that seems to be much less the case today.

You can only tell suburbanites and their cars to fuck off for so long before a lot of them start listening.

Combine these factors with the hollowing out of office jobs due to work from home, and the Providence renaissance might be in danger of truly stalling out.

Gotta agree

Uxbridge is central Mass, not Western Mass.

Lower Artic

Jerky’s!

Indeed.

I agree about the Promenade/Kinsley areas. But none of that has been reconfigured in the last 50 years, so I took your comment to refer to the 1990s era river-relocation project that created Waterplace Park etc.

As far as burying the 6/10 connector, that recent proposal was a pleasant fantasy. It failed for the same reasons that sunken highways across the nation remain uncovered: expense.

Unfortunately, decking over highways or rail lines in the United States is wildly expensive- mostly due not to actual technical costs, but to the cascade of bureaucratic regulatory costs, which have killed almost every project of this type since the big dig in Boston.

Fun fact: The 6/10 connector is now widely blamed for severing the connecting urban fabric between Federal Hill and Olneyville. In fact, that connection was severed decades before, by rail lines.

The highway paralleled those rail lines, and surely reinforced the separation. But it isn’t accurate to say that the 6/10 connector was what cut these neighborhoods apart. That had already been done by the railroad right of way, decades before.

Edit: typo

How would you improve the way the river was reconfigured?

Thanks for doing some cleanup! We need more people like you.

Buy a little parcel with some old greenhouses that’s currently vacant. There are plentyof these properties in Johnston and Cranston, among other places, with greenhouses already on them.

just look at commercial real estate listings. Much easier if that type of business has a precedent of having been established there.

From the Ritz to the Waldorf, we’ve got the whole city covered!

Powder Mill Ledges in Smithfield has a nice mature pine forest if you walk about 10 minutes in.

https://asri.org/hike/wildliferefuges/powder-mill-ledges-wildlife-refuge-asri-headquarters.html

Ah yes, Providencetown.

Build the Seawall.

Sorry, I didn’t understand that you meant late for the first substantial snow.

I thought you meant that you were surprised it would still be snowing here in January.

That said, yes, this is a lot less snow than a normal year, but it really varies year to year.