Downtown Kalamazoo is not too large, so it is easy to walk (instead of driving) around most of the downtown, in fact it is easier for most people to walk because there are so many one way streets. The downtown had numerous banks, coffee shops, and beauty salons. There were also some disheveled people (most likely homeless) in downtown and that made it a little less pleasant for shoppers.
Burdick Street is very different than most of the rest of downtown. Burdick street is a much more comfortable shopping experience--it has less traffic, more benches, cleaner, more trees and flowers, and more shops. There were a lot of empty storefronts on Burdick Street which is bad for businesses around them, because there are fewer stores to attract them to the area and it makes the area feel more rundown.
2.Improvements:
- The sign that listed what stores were in the mall was very small and had I not known that there was a mall there I would have just thought it was another store. Therefore the sign should be larger and more colorful.
-Have more trash cans, and also have recycling bins with the trash cans
-There should be more variety in the types of shops in downtown (more than coffee shops, banks, and beauty salons).
3.
"Light attracts. The raunchiest block on Lexington (Fifty-seventh to Fifty-eighth, west side) was notable for its lighting effects. One store, Icarus, featured blinking strobe lights and neon. The effect was so chaotic one would think that the adjoining store owners would object. They did not."(Whyte, 86)
This passage is similar to a restaurant that I saw called Mangia Mangia. It did not have nearly as many as the one in the passage, however it did have lit sign and flashing light around the border of the sign; Mangia Mangia was the only store/restaurant on the street that I saw with flashing lights. It was not very distracting, but I know that it succeeded in catching my attention because it is the only restaurant that I saw for the first time that I still remember the name of.
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