The San Antonio River Improvements Project: Urban Segment of the Museum Reach

San Antonians like to hang out together, and we’re good at it. It’s testament to our mutual tolerance and genuine civic affection that riots don’t break out at, say, post-Spurs-championship pachangas. As we toast the grand opening of the San Antonio River’s Museum Reach Urban Segment this weekend, we’re reminded that we need and deserve more public space for everybody — for dancing, stroller-pushing, boy-cruising, long walks, long conversations, small talk, and big talk with our neighbors. We need more opportunities to simply see one anothers’ faces — brown, black, white, old, young, male, female, gay, straight, local, and tourist.

We’ve done all right by our visitors; there’s no shortage of folks trolling Ripley’s Believe It Or Not across from the Alamo, or conventioneers packing Dick’s Last Resort on a Friday night, and this is all good: good for the city’s coffers and for our national reputation as a mecca of fun times. But public space for San Antonians is good for our collective soul, as well. The Great Cities of the World proclaim their identities by their public spaces: New York’s Central Park, the Place de la Concorde and the Orangerie in Paris, the National Mall in D.C. and Tokyo’s Harajuku district all speak to a city as a social unit, living and working together. More.