The River Walk is landlocked. It lacks substantial and meaningful connections to the city around it because it has been conceived and built as a separate ecosystem. It is a zoo where the visitors are on the inside. The River Walk must be an economic generator of not just tourist dollars, but of a deep and wide tax base. The River Walk can connect and revitalize downtown, but it must be reconceived.
There are thirty sets of stairs in the loop connecting the river below with the streets above. But each of those stairs is a study in parceling out views slowly and in careful sequence, like a delicately choreographed striptease. The River Walk relies on its cultivated secrecy to wind its way around the feet of our buildings, the sheltered and protected walk offering limited views of the streets above. So our streets are divorced from the life below, and they will always lack life until the two are connected in more than just a visual sense.
This idea slashes across downtown, cutting apart and bonding together the order of things in a new way: one which links our precious assets with the places where we desire investment. It is a bright light shining on a problem – the disconnection of the River Walk – which is our greatest treasure, our biggest hindrance, and our magnificent opportunity.
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