Conceptual Only

The Mall fountains were designed to invite participation, but the City keeps wanting to keep people away from them.

"It's not right to put water before people and then keep them away from it," wrote William Whyte in his classic 1980 study of New York's plazas, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. "But this is what has been happening across the country."

All the significant urban spaces designed by renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin - Levi Plaza in San Francisco, Portland, Oregon's Keller Fountain Park, Seattle's Freeway Park, and, of course, our Downtown Mall - have fountains or pools that invite participation. They are a signature of the famous designer's immediately recognizable work. And while the Downtown Mall doesn't feature something as extravagant and wild as Keller Fountain Park [Halprin did have a plan for a large, participatory fountain plaza at the east end of the mall where the Ting Pavilion is, but the city balked at the cost], it does have four minor waterworks from the master.