Spotlight Shines on Downtown Warehouse District

Friend and fellow blogger Yuri Artibise is organizing his second Jane’s Walk this weekend in Downtown Phoenix. The nationwide (free) event, named after urbanist Jane Jacobs, is meant to draw attention to walkable neighborhoods within your city. This year, Artibise is focusing on the warehouse district in our urban core. According to the Jane’s Walk Phoenix website, Artibise points out that our warehouse district has been neglected. Buildings have either been razed or boarded up. In most cities, warehouse districts are epicenters of the arts and culture scene, in addition to being a great place for young entrepreneurs to see their business grow. That’s not the case here in Phoenix, and Artibise quotes Jane Jacobs as to why our city people should change their mindset when it comes to adaptive reuse of buildings in this part of town.

Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them…. for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings. – Jane Jacobs, “The Death and Life of American Cities”

You can learn more about the Downtown Phoenix warehouse district by joining Yuri and dozens of others this Saturday from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. The walk will start at AmenZone, located at 106 E. Buchanan, which is just a couple of blocks south of the 3rd Street and Jefferson light rail station. Information on the event can be found here and instructions on how to ride the light rail can be found on my website here.

Tags: Jane's Walk Phoenix, Light.Rail.Blogger, phoenix light rail, Tony Arranaga

The Phoenix light rail and a carfree experiment is Tony's elevator pitch for his website lightrailblogger.com. Tony's passion for alternative transportation grows stronger each month as he attempts - and succeeds - at living carfree in the desert. How does Tony do it? That's what he explains on his blog - which talks about life's adventures when you step out from behind the wheel. Of course, getting around Downtown Phoenix on the light rail is a big part of his story.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 29th, 2010 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Arts & Culture, Business Development, Community Commentary, Spotlight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.