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Cross posting my latest article here. How I would redo the ground level.
Thanks for sharing this.
I asked my friend Google Maps and saw that it's about 1.2 kilometers from roughly the west end of the proposed walkway to the Beagle Pub, which I used as a standin for "somewhere in Cook Street Village."
I wonder whether, instead of a basic fountain, there's a place somewhere at the eastern end of the walkway for a textured stone wall or two with water cascading partway down. Not as massive as the water wall on the rotary island on Jutlant south of Gorge -- which, being on that island, seems to active discourage anyone walking up to it, much less sitting.
Maybe the stone walls are low enough for patio people to see over but high enough for people to sit along the opposite side, with perhaps a taller stone (with a smaller footprint) in the basic fountain spot. Or maybe the basic fountain is a more slender shape (the eye of Horus, looking askance), moved a bit further southeast to avoid bottlenecks with the patios. That might even subtly encourage people to turn into the walkway. If they're going straight (along Quadra or along Courtney) then they're not turning in anyway, but if they're flexible they'd encounter the wider path (between patio and WaitFountain.
I was sure I saw in your article or its comments a suggestion of a pedestrian scramble, but now I can't find it. In any case, I think that's a better idea than the cathedral's urges to turn Quadra into a patio. In some ways the idea would be for the scramble to cover both crossing Quadra and crossing Courtney. That would have the pedestrians sharing time with vehicles, as they manage to do (with far more of both) at Wharf and Government.
You're right about the sunny patio. Discovery's patio, which is great, is also in full shadow several months of the year because of the six-storey-plus height of the Royal Theatre.
That makes me think about lighting for most of the walkway, because other than the southernmost end, there could be a lot of potential gloom, as there is when you're approaching the nearby public library through the brickwork patio or whatever it is on the Blanchard side.
