Thursday, November 09, 2006

Skyway

A skyway is a path that is traversed without touching the ground.
In an urban setting, a skyway, catwalk, skywalk, footbridge or pedway is an enclosed bridge between two buildings. This protects pedestrians from the weather. These skyways are usually owned by businesses, and are therefore not public spaces . Skyways usually connect on the second or third floor , though they are sometimes much higher, as in Petronas Towers . The space in the buildings connected by skyways is often devoted to retail business, so areas around the skyway may operate as a shopping mall. Non-commercial areas with closely associated buildings, such as university campuses, can often have skyways and/or tunnels connecting buildings. At 16 km, the +15 walkway in downtown Calgary, Alberta is the largest elevated system in the world. The system connects over 100 office towers. However, the combined sized of the Minneapolis-St. Paul systems has been claimed to be even larger . On a smaller scale, terminals of large airports are often connected by skywalk systems, as at Manchester International Airport.
Some cities have the equivalent of a skyway underground, and many locales have mixed subway/skyway systems; see underground city.Some covered bridges were ruined in the September 11th attacks, at the World Trade Center.


Halloween Costume

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