Judging from recent articles and blogs, the issue isn't whether we should build more skyways, but tear down the ones we have. The argument says that skyways suck the life off the streets — literally! People hang on to street signs and parking meters, before they vanish screaming — and we can revive downtown by removing one per year. Presumably there would be yellow warning tape so people didn't plunge to the sidewalk.
The anti-skyway people say they have no connection to the streets. This is true. Can't tell you the number of times I've seen desperate people throw a cinder block through the glass and throw a rope through the jagged hole so they can get down, but this could be solved by installing firefighter poles in every skyway, or buckets attached to winches. Would that be enough? No. See, if there weren't skyways, all those stores would be down on the ground floor, and people would throng the streets, which is good and vibrant. When the same people are vibrantly thronging upstairs, it is bad, because …
… hold on, it'll come to me …
… because they should be outside like other cities. That's it.
Here's the strange thing: in the late spring, and summer, and early fall, the streets are full of people. Why is that? Correct: because it is not painful outside. If you ask most people about what they like about downtowns, here's what polls high: "strolling along a beautiful street on a warm day with a gentle breeze in my face, the sound of a busker playing his guitar on the corner, the laughter of people in outdoor cafes, and the sense of individuals coming together in an urbane, civilized fashion."
Here's what polls low: "a bitter cruel wind that feels as if beetles are driving their pincers into my eyeballs." Also "slipping on the sidewalk and feeling my back teeth slam together like a leg-hold trap."
In other words, when the weather has that screechy-lethal quality common to winter, people do not want to be thronging vibrantly. They do not want a stroll for lunch to require preparations normally associated with someone in Antarctica getting ready to use the outhouse.
The great innovation and promise of the skyways was simple: in the times of the year when it's cold, you will be inside and toasty, looking through the glass as you cross the streets, scoffing at the impotent maw of winter howling outside. Now this seems like it's bad, false, antisocial — as if the proper thing to do is not just take the streets to get to the soup joint in January, but bike there.