I was recently reading an excellent blog post over at Planning Livable Communities about the apparent failure of the pedestrian only area of Downtown Crossing at night in Boston. According to the post, the Boston Globe tells how the area loses it’s charm at night without the cars. That absolutely floors me and is further evidence how backwards we sometimes have it with relation to creating a people-friendly urban environment. How the heck do cars create a more charming environment.
According to Wikipedia, there are approximately 30 pedestrian malls (one form of a pedestrian street) in the United States. As a Canadian, I do know there are some major pedestrian streets in some of the larger cities in the country (Sparks Street in Ottawa comes to mind). Yet, despite the vision to create an ideal urban environment with relation to these pedestrianized districts, a lot fall flat here in North America. One has to ask why when such a thing sounds like a pleasent image in our urban environment.
One of my explanations is that pedestrianized streets often feel like afterthoughts in both Canada and the United States and rarely take the focus away from larger city center shopping malls or other major downtown centers already established in the city. This is very much the opposite of European cities where these pedestrianized zones are often a major destination within the city. Take Sparks Street in Ottawa for example. Approximately five minutes from the street is the Rideau Center, Ottawa’s major downtown shopping center with a large number of choice chain retailers. Since Ottawa is obviously a very cold place, where do you think many residents or tourists decide to shop. Sparks Street isn’t marketed as anything more than a pedestrian street. It isn’t marketed as a great destination in the city and feels more marginal compared with other regions within the downtown core. Thus, retailers and other businesses depending on people traffic fail here despite the limitless possibilities.
It is a real shame that we are unable to truly take advantage of a zone without auto traffic in the city. For these are places that are truly made for the people and yet often prove unsuccessful, even to the point where they are removed entirely. It’s a sad prospect and yet it doesn’t seem like something that could be too hard to popularize if there was simply more focus put on them.
I agree that pedestrianized areas in Canadian cities often feel like afterthoughts. Canadians are also very skeptical of space without cars. The Ottawa example of Sparks Street fails mainly because it isn’t a community. No one lives there so the mall survives thanks mainly to the 9 to 5 crowd. After 5pm, the street is deserted. Other examples like Toronto’s Kensington Market are only sometimes pedestrianized so the area is unable to truly commit to a pedestrian lifestyle. Victoria, BC, has been struggling for ages to pedestrianize Government St. downtown but there has been a huge amount of resistance, mainly from local business owners who think the cars bring in traffic (even though there is no parking anywhere on the street). It’s strange that Victoria, which has been called the “most walkable city in Canada” and “Canada’s bicycle capital” does not have a single pedestrianized street.