Last spring, the New York city government decided to close parts of Times Square to traffic, creating pedestrian-only plazas. (Photo courtesy of Sean Marshall)
Since the 1960s or ‘70s, people have flocked to suburban malls to shop and hang out. A lot of cities tried to get people back downtown by keeping cars out—they shut down streets and created pedestrian malls. Nora Flaherty reports the downtown pedestrian malls seldom worked, but some planners think it’s worth a try again.
Transcript
Since the 1960s or ‘70s, people have flocked to suburban malls to shop and hang out. A lot of cities tried to get people back downtown by keeping cars out—they shut down streets and created pedestrian malls. Nora Flaherty reports the downtown pedestrian malls seldom worked, but some planners think it’s worth a try again.
If you go to New York City’s Times Square, you’ll encounter a lot of lights, a lot of noise, throngs of tourists and office workers, and guys hawking theatre tickets…
But these days, you won’t encounter a tangle of cars, cabs, and busses. That’s because last spring, the city government decided to close parts of Times Square to traffic and create pedestrian-only plazas.
Rochelle Paterson works for the city. She says that the extra breathing space suits her just fine.
“I always thought 42nd street was so congested—and sometimes you need a place to sit and just relax.”
Now, New York is densely populated and people are used to walking to get around. It’s busy here. But pedestrian malls in other cities have often attempted to bring crowds into areas that cities wish would be busier.
A few decades ago, cities all over the country were feeling the pain as indoor malls opened in the suburbs….and lots of those cities hoped pedestrian malls would make downtowns centers of activity again.
Poughkeepsie, New York was one; and its mall did end up becoming a center of activity…
Just not the kind they were hoping for. The city shut down traffic. Built a nice pedestrian walkway. But then things went wrong. The city repealed laws against public drunkenness and loitering. A county social services office moved into the mall.
And then came drugs, gangs, and prostitution.
Ron Knapp is the police chief in Poughkeepsie; He was just starting his career in 1974 when the pedestrian mall was first built:
“So you kind of had a tough element out there that you had to deal with. And as those laws loosened up it hurt the mall, and as the businesses further went out, and once you’re in that downhill cycle it’s hard to stop.”
In 1981 Poughkeepsie decided to reopen the area to traffic as part of an effort to—again—revitalize downtown. Most of the 200-or-so American cities that tried out pedestrian malls were not successful. Reid Ewing is a professor of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, and he works with the American Planning Association:
“Ped traffic had been light before and businesses not doing that well with people fleeing to the suburbs in the 60s or 70s. And so the ped malls actually exacerbated the problem.”
People thought parking was a hassle. The downtown pedestrian malls were just not convenient.
There have been success stories, though—like Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado, and Church Street, in Burlington, Vermont. And those successes tended to have a few things in common:
They were not in depressed downtowns; they were in areas where there tended to be a lot of students and tourists, and where people felt safe; and cities needed to provide a lot of activities—things like farmers markets—to bring people in.
In other words, a pedestrian mall could make an already-pretty-nice area, nicer…but it couldn’t pull an area out of the kind of a downhill slide.
….But having learned some tough lessons, a lot of urban planners like Reid Ewing are saying it’s time to try again.
“It’s just consistent with so many things happening today…dealing with climate change, the US obesity epidemic. Getting people out walking who would otherwise get in their cars. It’s a small thing but it’s an important part of this puzzle.”
Planners concede pedestrian malls cannot work just anywhere. But they can work…to make some areas more vibrant, and more environmentally friendly.
For The Environment Report, I’m Nora Flaherty.