
Your Sacramento Guide: K Street development hinges on food
Rick Cushman | Sacramento Bee | Published Sunday, Jul. 18, 2010
(Midway through this article, Cushman points out how how well the Town Center has become the regualr evening destination and social gathering center for El dorado Hills)
Odd as it might sound, one of the lucky strokes for Sacramento is that it didn't boom in the 1960s and early '70s.
If it had, city officials and developers and anyone with a soul might now be trying to redo an entire central city with the same charming humanity as Capitol Mall or those grim middle blocks of the K Street Mall.
Please note the irony. Capitol Mall is a concrete example of the kind of development that went on not so long ago, emphasis on "concrete." It's wide, tall, solid, with few signs that human life can survive for long at street level.
K Street Mall was only marginally better, even though it was a shopping center. And the key pieces missing from both stretches – if you talk to urban geographers, architects, planners and others who have watched or helped this region evolve and become more accommodating to human life on the street – were places to live and places to eat. (Click here to read more)