Are pedestrian malls the future or the relic of antiquated thinking?
Sacramento’s K Street Transit Mall Credit: El Cobrador
Even as New York City makes big news for transforming parts of 34th Street into a pedestrian mall, Sacramento is pulling back from the concept. Four decades after first closing a section of downtown’s K Street to automobile traffic, the leaders of California’s capital have had enough. They want the cars back to bring new vitality to the city’s streets to save businesses threatened by extinction due to a lack of traffic.
In the post-war period, many medium-sized American cities seemed to be doing it — by forcing cars off the downtown business corridors, the assumption was that retail traffic would thrive just as it was in the big new shopping malls being built in every region. Influenced by the example of Kalamazoo, Michigan, which pedestrianized Burdick Street in 1959, more than 200 other cities hoped that this approach would bring new vitality to their dying centers by beautifying the street and encouraging consumption-oriented strolling.
Unfortunately, the suburban malls mostly won the contest; in cities across America, pedestrian malls or not, downtowns were mostly dead by the 1990s. The lack of noise, pollution, and danger associated with fewer cars was replaced by something that induced a lot more fear: A lack of people. Potential crime was far more detrimental to business growth than the possibility of being run over in a car.
Sacramento has experienced a slow decline in its downtown since the introduction of the transit mall, though it’s unclear whether that loss of business was a result of the loss of cars from K Street or just the inevitable consequence of the lack of interest in shopping downtown experienced by cities nationwide.
The addition of light rail service to K Street in 1987 didn’t improve the situation appreciably as it replaced what had been an entirely pedestrian boulevard with a light rail right-of-way.
And so the obvious course was to reverse direction. Kalamazoo moved to reintroduce cars to its downtown in 2000. Cities like Raleigh, North Carolina followed its example several years later. Even Sacramento conducted an experiment a few years ago to reopen a couple blocks of the mall and instantly saw more retail traffic.
So the city will now spend $2.7 million to bring cars back in by late next year. Cars will be allowed to travel along one lane in each direction at a maximum of 15 mph with no parking. It is hoped that this influx of vehicles will bring more eyes to the street and thus improve the downtown’s business environment.
Of course, now that New York is spending millions to expand its use of pedestrian malls and plazas, one wonders if Sacramento is taking the right step. Some cities, including Charlottesville and Denver, have thriving walking-only downtown streets that weathered the post-war decline in inner cities. In other words, it isn’t necessarily the pedestrian mall that caused the fall-off in patronage for stores in Sacramento, but rather that the city wasn’t “ready” for this type of street. Or something went wrong in Sacramento that these other cities didn’t experience.
California’s capital may have suffered from a density problem: it didn’t have enough residents and office workers in the immediate surrounding area to keep its streets active during off-hours, so the pedestrian mall often felt too quiet to be comfortable. The fact that many consumers visiting the street arrived by automobile made the situation worse. In New York, where there are hundreds of people on virtually every block, there’s little to fear, and most people visiting businesses likely come on foot anyway, so getting rid of car access won’t change much.
Is it possible to create a working pedestrian mall without much foot traffic? Perhaps Sacramento could have redesigned K Street with, for instance, a priority on lighting or plants. On the other hand, if there aren’t many people walking on a street in the first place, what’s the point of closing it off to automobiles?
Yonah Freemark is an Urban Leaders Fellow, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. He writes the Grassroutes column for Next American City. He also writes The Transport Politic blog. Contact him at yonah@americancity.org
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電車男 on Mon, May 03, 2010 at 11:37am
I realize there are many factors that go into the success or failure of a pedestrian mall, but one thing I notice about a lot of the ones in the US is that they have no weather protection. “Shopping Streets” in Japan are abundant in small and large cities alike, but they all come with roofs. It’s basically a mall that uses existing businesses, and it attracts pedestrians—even those who aren’t shopping—partly because of this protection from the elements. On a rainy day, people will naturally try to take a route that keeps them dry, and these shopping streets fit the bill. The abundance of shops and businesses are partly there just to capitalize on the guaranteed crowds that the streets draw simply for being roofed. Of course, there are no cars either (except possibly for delivery trucks, I don’t recall either way), which makes it even more effective.
D. Onishenko on Mon, May 03, 2010 at 11:49am
This last paragraph sums up the problem perfectly:
“California’s capital may have suffered from a density problem: it didn’t have enough residents and office workers in the immediate surrounding area to keep its streets active during off-hours, so the pedestrian mall often felt too quiet to be comfortable. The fact that many consumers visiting the street arrived by automobile made the situation worse. In New York, where there are hundreds of people on virtually every block, there’s little to fear, and most people visiting businesses likely come on foot anyway, so getting rid of car access won’t change much.”
It is critical mass that makes these pedestrian-only retail corridors work. In that, New York won’t have a problem maintain pedestrian activity and general usage. The problem with far too many municipalities that attempted to implement this retail-oriented transformation, was it was a band-aid solution that was applied out of context of the necessary supporting parameters (eg. increased residential and office densities adjacent to the site) and ignorant of externalities such as percentage of drivers, etc.
Calgary, Alberta has a interesting twist on the traditional pedestrian mall concept along Stephan Avenue downtown. During the day when thousands of adjacent office workers are present, it is a pedestrian only corridor. However, due to the lack of immediately adjacent residential, the area is much quieter at night. As such, they open up the corridor to automobile traffic to maintain easier accessibility and a sense of higher levels of activity. Still, it is hardly considered a truly successful model, but works in some regard.
Jeff in St. Louis on Tue, May 04, 2010 at 8:16am
Perhaps one of the best US examples of a pedestrian mall re-opened to street traffic is the Crown Square project in Old North St. Louis. An old, struggling commercial district on 14th Street on the near north side of St. Louis was turned into a pedestrian mall in the 1970s as a desperate attempt to breathe new life into it. Instead, closing it off from traffic only hastened its decline. By 2000, the commercial district was completely abandoned, and many buildings were literally collapsing on themselves.
Through a public/private partnership, donations, historic tax credits and a dedicated neighborhood association, the pedestrian plaza has been ripped out and 14th Street will be re-opened to street traffic, later this year, this time with progressive urban design in mind. Best of all, every single building on the street (including several with literally two walls left), have been completely restored. This development should be hailed as a national model of urban revitalization done right. New businesses and community spaces are already popping up, and the shabby old neighborhood is brimming with new life and investment. The Crown Square/14th Street Mall project was recently awarded the Most Enhanced Award from the Landmarks Association of St. Louis.
For more information about the rebirth of St. Louis’ 14th Street, visit http://www.onsl.org
John W on Fri, May 07, 2010 at 3:52am
Montreal, too, is expanding the number of pedestrianised streets. In addition to seasonal closure of rue Ste-Catherine in the Village, the Plateau Mont-Royal district is embarking on a programme of closing smaller roads in residential areas, In many cases this is to augment park space; there’s also one that will have a farmer’s market.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Plateau+close+streets/2982434/story.html
Richard Campbell on Sat, May 08, 2010 at 1:08pm
It is the idea that a pedestrian mall will save a failing retail street that is really questionable. For busy retail streets where the sidewalks are crowned, pedestrian streets are a great idea to make the street even better.
cph in So. Cal on Sat, May 08, 2010 at 7:50pm
One thing to ask: what kind of stores are in these “malls”?
I was in Sacramento about six years ago, and walked along K-street. Mostly downmarket stores, and a few panhandlers. Downtown Sac also has a large enclosed mall which seemed to be getting all the shoppers.
I can’t say if letting cars back on the street will fix K-street in Sacramento. I do remember another pedestrian mall, in Santa Monica, CA, that wasn’t doing so well in the late 80’s, so they let cars on for a few years (at night only). I guess it “worked”: more shoppers came, better stores moved in, and eventually it went back to pedestrian-only. Today, the 3rd Street shopping area is one of the most popular “malls” in Southern California.
poncho on Sun, May 09, 2010 at 12:48am
New York City was the one place where pedestrian malls made sense and still do make sense given the urban vitality and foot traffic.
Todays “pedestrian malls” are completely different from those of the 1960s and 1970s. People now know what it takes to create and sustain urbanism, back then they didn’t. The designs of that era also worked against urbanity with either wide empty open spaces or dark spaces with hidden spots that obstructed visability of retail establishments and other people (safety concerns).
The pedestrian malls of today seem to be going by the term “pedestrian plazas” are the New York DOT style that are more informal places with umbrellas, moveable chairs and tables and most of all they are about creating lively people places than abstract landscape architecture designs.
This 1960s era film by Victor Gruen about the Fresno [pedestrian] Fulton Mall is worth a look
Fresno: A City Reborn - rare 1968 documentary by Victor Gruen Associates
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj0UTOXwskI
In US cities outside NYC, I think the best thing is to make a street more into a main street with a lane of traffic in each direction (two way), lots of on-street parking preferrably angled (you get your ample parking without having to resort to ugly city-killing parking lots or ugly and expensive garages) , curb extensions and bulb-outs to make it easier to cross, lots of street furniture and a decent number of trees (though not too many that the street becomes dark) and incentives to property owners on a given street to turn a blank wall into a retail use or active ground floor use. The key is retail continuity and human scaled placemaking.
Jeff, Baltimore has a pedestrian mall very similar called Old Town Mall, from the same era, also in an inner city neighborhood outside of downtown and also suffered an identical fate. The buildings are all boarded up and abandoned. Sounds like they need to follow in the same footsteps with the revitalization.
Prairie in Minneapolis on Mon, May 10, 2010 at 11:33am
The other major thing that is missing from these discussions is management. Most of these pedestrian malls were slapped in with no entity to do the place-making work necessary to make them successful. The ped malls that exist today all have some sort of entity (mostly business improvement districts) that do the day to day work of making them a destination and making them an attractive destination with an interesting mix of activities. This active management is key in their success.
Peter Smith on Sat, May 15, 2010 at 3:35pm
i wish they would allow bikes to ride through the mall. why does NYC hate bikes?
the State Street mall in chicago will killed off by bus fumes, not lack of people. the bus fumes (and noise) chased people away.
Nathanael in Ithaca, NY on Sun, May 23, 2010 at 11:27pm
The pedestrian mall in Ithaca, NY works excellently despite blowing three ways of hell out of the street grid.
I think it benefits from several things:
(1) It wasn’t a declining downtown. Lots of people live there (over the shops), lots of people work there, lots of people shop there.
(2) Vast amounts of parking is within one block. (The alternative would be some other way for the suburbanites to get there.)
(3) Buses bring the college students there.
(4) There are businesses which are open and patronized 24 hours, and the city made sure to promote them.
(5) It’s a friendly place, with playgrounds, plazas for music, street furniture, and (originally) a fountain.
(6) It’s small. Three blocks in a T-shape.
More of the ‘pedestrian plaza’ design than the ‘pedestrian mall’ design, then, I guess.
Mulad on Wed, May 26, 2010 at 9:25am
New York is remarkably different than nearly all other U.S. cities in terms of foot traffic and transit usage, so I’d avoid drawing any conclusions about whether a pedestrian mall could work there from what has happened in other U.S. cities.
Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis has been a mixed bag. A transit mall instead of a plain pedestrian mall, it sort of works. However, Minneapolis has the weird aspect of skyways everywhere, so most of the shopping is up on the second floor. Rather than being accessible from public sidewalk, many stores are only reachable through private walkways that have hours that don’t really encourage people to come and visit except during the day on weekdays.
Nicollet is in the process of transition, since many express bus routes have moved over to new bus lanes on 2nd and Marquette Avenues. They’re trying to make the mall a more friendly place with less bus noise and more accessibility for bicycles, but we’ll have to see if it helps or hurts things.