New York architect Mario Gandelsonas, one of the urban visionaries behind Des Moines’ East Village and Pappajohn Sculpture Park, looked to an unlikely inspiration while dreaming up a new Walnut Street for downtown: the Arab Spring.
To be sure, rioting residents have never overtaken Walnut Street to oust Mayor Frank Cownie in the way Arab world protesters flooded the region’s city squares last year in civil unrest. Yet Gandelsonas told a group of community members on Friday at the Greater Des Moines Partnership that he saw a common connection: technology and the public space.
If cell phones and Twitter could draw thousands of people to a public space to protest, he said, why couldn’t they draw them to party?
“Obviously what I’m saying is that public spaces and the virtual world are now working in ways that we cannot even conceive,” said Gandelsonas.
The transit mall that’s filled Walnut Street with buses and prohibited cars for 27 years will leave the space this fall for a new transit station south of downtown. Downtown Community Association President and CEO Glenn Lyons invited Gandelsonas back to Des Moines to envision the worn-out street as an opportunity to create a new center of culture, retail and information.
