The park south of Harbour Square is actually well used in the summer months, syn. There is at least as much greenery there as in any other part of the nearbye waterfront, including the Music Garden. It is mercifully free of vendors, isn't programmed with events, and many folks enjoy their leisure time all the more as a result.
I live in a single-use neighbourhood - Riverdale. Street after street of residential, without businesses or retail. We get by just fine. We thrive, in fact. And people who don't live in our neighbourhood wander or drive through whenever they like, without going into severe consumerism withdrawal or feeling they must drop off care packages at our doorsteps. And when we all go to work, and the kids are at school - Monday to Friday - the nabe is as dead as a doornail, and I don't hear anyone weeping ( neither those of us who live there, nor people on this forum ) because of it. Why should they? The place works, is connected to the rest of the city, and has a unique character.
Why then the panic over a condominium development - Pier27 - that is attractively designed and adapts the forms of industrial waterfront buildings, continues the revival of the waterfront by bringing people to live there, and is permeable to the city by means of a broad pedestrian promenade that is already characteristic of the harbour? Panic for the sake of what? The imagined right to stop off in a smoke shop and buy a Snickers bar, or wander into the ground floor for a sit-down meal, in any residential condominium building in town because the teachings of Jane Jacobs supposedly paved the way - created the demand maybe - for the right to do so? Ridiculous!
As with the recent discussion of the Distillery District, where attempts were constantly being made to link that development to developments in other parts of the city - and other cities even - where no interchangeability was possible, so we're seeing the same thing happening here with the "superblock" canard that doesn't deal with the actual site and what is being done there.