The uniformly poor and very uninteresting, or frankly ugly, architecture of the surrounding buildings, no grace, quirkiness, age or style.

The shops generally are not that interesting.

The poor design and quality of the street furniture, seating arrangements and the trees placed to the side, inappropriately. The Manners Mall looks like a pedestrian throughway, designed to be quickly converted back to traffic, rather than something that only pedestrians or cyclists could safely navigate or better still, would wish to linger.

No shelter, Manners Mall, like DIxon and Vivian Street are some of the windiest streets in a very windy city . The architects of the mall should have understood this and placed screens, trees or booths or whatever to break up the broad sweep of the Mall to allow some repose and shelter, and a feeling of more intimate areas, this was a major lost opportunity from the start.

Having said that I’ll be sorry to see it go, sacrificed for a bus route. I am not convinced bus trips will gain more than a few seconds of time. Also there are only 356 metres of pedestrianised street in the whole central city (excluding the harbourside). Losing Manners Mall means we will only have 240 metres of Cuba Mall. I think that that is a big loss, and Wellington’s lack of pedestrianised streets is a major failing, comparing very badly with many European cities, and is a continued loss of amenity to the public.

Jason, you’re absolutely right, and thanks for bringing it up. We have a copy of that book “Great Streets” by Allan B Jacobs here at the Eye of the Fish library – and it has some excellent analysis of what it takes to make a great pedestrian space.

I particularly like the way it looks at the Cross-section of the street as well – rather than just the plan – and note that Jacobs makes the point that street design and tree spacing must not be left to the traffic engineers. While they may be good at designing smooth paths for cars to travel safely at speed, when it comes to pedestrians, we actually want cars to travel slowly, and one way to do this is to make their journey feel unsafe. This appears to have been an aim with the recent Lambton Quay alterations, where the road edge ducks in and out to create bus stops and loading bays, and negates the streamlining of traffic flow – and it works.

Jacobs notes other pointers for Great Streets:
Places for People to Walk with some Leisure
Physical Comfort
Definition (ie boundaries both vertical and horizontal)
Qualities that Engage the Eyes
Transparency (a sense of what is beyond or behind)
Complementarity (do the buildings ‘get along’ with each other)
Maintenance (physical repairs)
Quality of Construction and Design

It’s arguable that there are a few of those where the ball has been dropped in the case of Manners, which may be one reason why the space feels not quite right.

I read a great book in the Wellington Public Library (to which I can no longer go until I have paid off about $90 worth of fines!!!) about Great Streets (possibly called Great Streets), and it listed a few criteria, one of which was the termination. Taranaki St doesn’t work for a lot of reasons, one of which is it just sort of peters out like a sewage outlet onto sand.

Think of the generally accepted ‘good’ streets in Wellington:

Cuba – terminates at two dramatic buildings, three really: That apartment block, which is ugly but interesting, and somewhat imposing; and the lane between Town Hall and Michael Fowler.

Manners nth – terminates at three great buildings at the nth/west end: the Church, St George, and Majestic Center, and then an imposing hill. Looking the other way, Manners doesn’t have nearly the same appeal.

Mercer/Wakefield Streets – ends at Willis at the building that apparently isn’t Community House, and winds, so it seems to terminate at the NZ Racing Building/Lido or Civic Square or Dominion Building.

Courtenay Place – A steep hill at the end of Dixon vs the imposing Embassy and Mt Vic.

So it’s not necessarily the architecture of the street, but how the buildings define the space. Manners is never going to work until there is some definition (not a big radio dial!). The Burger King building and the James Smiths sort of do this job, but the Oaks and the medium/low rise along the malls are the key to defining Manners. If the Oaks was five stories higher, and five or six different buildings instead of one complex, and if the McDonalds was an interesting ‘gateway corner’ type building and crucially, there were lots of trolley bus wires and poles, then Manners would be more like mid/lower Willis Street – not necessarily pleasant, but an attractive, bustling city street.

Not sure if that made much sense. I’m running out of icafe money…

I should also have thrown in Chaffers Boathouse apartments, where it meets the waterfront, as another example of a popular outdoor dining space…

- And speaking of the space on the south side – given that Eon Design store in Auckland has just gone belly up (in the paper in the weekend), then it would seem unlikely to be coming down and opening a branch up down here in Shelbyville.

So: room for another bar on the waterfront?

Kumutoto? Any number of restaurants/cafes that spill out onto the street down Courtenay? Midland Park?

I reckon it is the architecture of the space itself, rather than just its wrapping (or the facades that front it, which are almost irrelevant… Kumutoto is is one of the few examples of a successfully space that is mostly the result of the building that defines it…

Kumutoto? Any number of restaurants/cafes that spill out onto the street down Courtenay? Midland Park?

I reckon it is the architecture of the space itself, rather than just its wrapping (or the facades that front it, which are almost irrelevant… Kumutoto is is one of the few examples of a successfully space that is mostly the result of the building that defines it…

Next to JS is probably Wellington’s ugliest building… The one with the dull gray panels and no detailing what so ever. I think there is a gym in the building. Horrible!